With ARK: Survival Evolved's full release coming down the pike, fan questions seem to be as plentiful as ever, and of course, the issue of crossplay functionality has popped up once again. And of course, Sony is the big bad guy in the debate. ARK's Lead Designer, Jeremy Stieglitz took a fan question about the possibility of ARK supporting cross-play between Xbox One and PS4 players.
Stieglitz reveals that the dev team has the feature working, but there's (supposedly only) one major hold up:
We have it working internally, but currently Sony won't allow it 🙁
— Jeremy Stieglitz (@arkjeremy) August 18, 2017
The issue of cross-play has been brought up time and time again from developers of all different walks of life. Basically, the developers support it, which includes CD Projekt RED (The Witcher) and Psyonix (Rocket League) but Sony isn't commenting one way or the other. Naturally, going cross-play is a consumer friendly move, and Microsoft getting there first is a nice bit of PR for them.
It's also quite brilliant, not because they thought of it first (they didn't), but because their "open invitation" to Sony and Nintendo would require everyone to use Windows 10 to accomplish it. Not only does it force the competition to adopt their platform, but it has the potential to put PlayStation and Nintendo fans in front of Microsoft products. Putting fans of the competition in front of your products could pay off in a few converts, particularly for a company that is struggling to gain a foothold in the East (of which Nintendo and Sony currently dominate).
Not only does it make them look good, but the only horse in the race that it benefits long-term, is Microsoft.
ARK: Survival Evolved releases in full later this month on August 29th on PC, Xbox One, and PS4.
