After nearly two years of push-and-shove Sony has enabled Cross-play on block building simulator Minecraft.
Back in 2018 Nintendo and Xbox announced that they would enable cross-play between their two consoles the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One respectively, an unprecedented move by the Japanese gaming juggernauts but a very welcome one to fans.
This left gamers asking why Sony was still absent from the equation? The two companies went as far as creating an ad campaign showing off their alliance and smearing Sony’s in the process.
In 2017, Microsoft announced cross-play would be enabled between Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, virtual reality headsets and Windows 10, leaving many to wonder what happened to Sony? Although Microsoft welcomed Sony with open arms; hoping to create an ecosystem for a magnitude of titles. Sony’s head of global sales Jim Ryan tried to defend Sony’s exclusion by stating:
“Exposing what in many cases are children to external influences we have no ability to manage or look after, it’s something we have to think about very carefully”.
The claims seem quite arbitrary when you remember the family orientated Nintendo has joined the infrastructure and actively promotes the protection of children who go online with their products. Months later it seems that the real reason was economic. John Smedley former President of Daybreak games tweeted:
“BTW when I was at Sony, the stated reason internally for this was money, they didn’t like someone buying something on an Xbox and it being used on a Playstation. Simple as that. Dumb reason, but there it is.”
The tweet was promptly deleted giving the reasoning a little more leverage.
More transparently, Minecraft cross-play requires a Microsoft account before logging on, so it’s not hard to imagine that PlayStation doesn’t like the idea of another companies name being involved with their product.
That all changes today though as Sony announced in a whimsical trailer that Minecraft after two long years will be joining the cross connectivity between the three big gaming hardware developers.
Available from the 10th of December with the new Minecraft: Bedrock edition, players will also have access to the Minecraft Marketplace, which allows player-created content to be bought and added to there games permanently like skins and custom mods.
Minecraft may not be the first game to bridge the gap between the giants with titles like Fortnite, Rocket league and PlayerUnkown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) all being utilised for some time now.
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