Fallout: 76, one of the stars of this year’s E3, will not feature cross-play for the PS4 because Sony says so.
Todd Howard, head of Bethesda Game Studios, confirmed the absence of cross-play, or the ability to access the same account over multiple consoles, in Fallout: 76.
“Sony is not as helpful as everyone would like,” he told Gamestar.de.
Fallout’s post-apocalyptic wasteland will only be salvageable under certain conditions. Console-hopping is out the window.
An Exclusive Past
Cross-play is a trend born from the proliferation of third-party game developers, both AAA and indie. The news of Fallout: 76 being locked from cross-play comes shortly after the Fortnite fiasco when eager Switch players discovered they couldn’t access their Fortnite account if the account was connected to the PlayStation Network. To play on the Switch, they would have had to start from scratch which caused outrage across the gaming community.
Though it is a newer trend in the relatively short time video gaming has been an industry, Microsoft has been open to cross-play on the Xbox and Nintendo signaled the same with the debut of the Switch last year, which offered much more third-party support than previous Nintendo consoles. Sony’s exclusivity remains a relic of the gaming world’s past when players had to pick and choose what console to beg their parents for as presents.
With the rise of PC gaming, a proliferation of indie game developers and new cooperation among AAA developers, Sony’s exclusivity might get them left in the dust.
What do you think of Sony's refusal to feature cross-play in Fallout: '76?
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