When a new gaming trend begins, and it’s proven that the gaming world at large likes it, or appreciates it, or wants more of it, it’s natural for various video game publishers to do what they can to get in on the market that has been created. However, when it came to Cross-Play, the ability to play with each other on two different systems in certain games, Sony was very resistant, to the point that they denied their own fans wishes for it.
However, they have since done and about face, and chairman Shawn Layden has chatted with Game Informer to acknowledge the wrongs that they had done:
“I think we learned, from the feedback from our fans, that it was important. And it wasn’t just important to a vocal minority,” Layden mentioned. He then added, “Even the fans who weren’t personally going to participate in a cross-play activity across different hardware pieces, just felt that it was kind of tone-deaf of PlayStation. We’ve tried to be so good certainly over the last four or five years to be in tune with our fans and to listen to what they want and try to be a friends of the gamer. We looked at that approach. This… this is just not friendly.”
He went on:
“People keep saying, “Why doesn’t Sony allow more people to have it?” We’re open for business on this one. All it takes is for publishers and developers who wish to permission it. As ever, just work with your PlayStation account manager, and they will walk you through the steps that we’ve learned through our partnership with Epic on how this works. I don’t believe right now there is any gating factor on that. I think they’re open to make proposals, because the Fortnite thing worked pretty well.”
Sony has seemed to learn from its mistake. But how long will it go? We’ll find out.
