When you are the king of the mambo and you have all the leading role assured, the normal thing is that on some occasions you do not let an iota of your leading role escape. And it is that everything that is to share the success, will not make you lose, but it will make you win less. It is one of the rules of any giant industry, and in the world of video games it was not going to be less.
PlayStation does not want to share
The suspicion of PlayStation in everything related to the cross-platform game on PS4, but today it has finally been known that these suspicions and that vox puepuli they were completely true. Thanks to the trial that is taking place between Epic Games and Apple, some confidential documents are surfacing that will inevitably splash the entire industry. And the first to get wet is neither more nor less than Sony.
According to emails presented at trial, Epic Games was asking Sony to enable cross-play on their platform so that users on other platforms could play against each other. This request did not seem to take effect, and Fortnite ended up blocking the crossplay while Nintendo and Microsoft allowed it on their platforms. The result? A wave of criticism from users forced the company to change plans later to finally allow its players to meet those who played on other consoles.
According to the information, it seems that Epic put it quite on a platter for Sony, promising it all possible prominence in the operation (with stellar intervention in the middle of E3), natively integrating all possible functions and even offering to extend the UE4 license, which It was due to expire soon. None of this served to convince the company, who flatly refused to offer crossplay.
No crossplay, no party
Obviously it wasn't something personal against Epic Games. It was rather a completely anti-crossplay position, since previously Rocket League and Minecraft were also left without the option, but not Nintendo and Microsoft. In the words of Gio Corsi, the former senior director of developer relations, "many companies are exploring this idea, but none can explain how cross-play between consoles improves PlayStation's business." Obviously they were looking for the maximum benefit for themselves, so everything that was distributed they looked at it with bad eyes.
For you players
Due to pressure from players not being able to enjoy crossplay in Fortnite, Sony ended up giving in, and activated the feature in that and other games. In any case, it has now been learned that Sony imposed a special rate on developers, so that all games with activated crossplay had to pay a special commission in order to compensate for the supposed losses generated by crossplay (it is unknown if Nintendo or Microsoft apply a similar fee on their platforms).
This is all that could be known about it after knowing the emails that both companies exchanged, so if you had any doubts about whether Sony introduced crossplay reluctantly, it seems that everything has been quite clear. The question is, will they regret not having activated it sooner?