Fortnite cross-platform & the PS4
At this years’ E3, Nintendo announced the introduction of Fortnite (probably the biggest game ever launched in the multiplayer arena ever) to the Switch. Which includes cross-play with Xbox & PC players. But notably, not with PS4 players.
Even more dubious, PS4 players that had an Epic login that originated on a PC are unable to bring their account over to other consoles. That includes character progression, in-game purchases, etc.
From Sony’s perspective, this is fine. Think of Sony kind of in the same vein as Apple. They’ve built a walled garden. They’ve never not had this. And they’re the dominant force in console gaming — if not gaming entirely given the prohibitive cost of PC GPUs these days — which leads their business model. They don’t want to “share”. They want to keep people locked into their ecosystem because on one hand, they can. On the other hand, because competition isn’t going to benefit Sony at all.
Also keep in mind that Sony is a Japanese company. In Japan, it’s very common for large companies to become as large a conglomerate as possible. I visit Tokyo regularly for work, and our office is inside Mitsubishi Banks building. Did you know Mitsubishi has a bank?!
With the Fortnite case specifically, though, I think Sony was probably caught off guard. I would be surprised if there was a meaningful meeting between Epic, Nintendo & Sony that outlined the difficulties. In fact, I would have been surprised if Epic, Sony or Nintendo expected the outrage that occurred. And that’s because Sony’s business models would never predict a large overlap between Switch & PS4 owners.
This isn’t a technical hurdle for Sony to get over. It’s a business priorities one. Sony blocks cross-play with Rocket League & Minecraft, for example. The Trello list of jobs-to-be-done by PSN devs might actually include enabling cross-play or even opening up PSN API’s to developers a bit more than they do today. But that Trello card is going to be very low on the priorities list.
The flipside of this is empathetic.
Imagine being a parent of a kid, and your kid is friends with another kid. Those parents bought their kid a Switch for her/his birthday, and you got a PS4 for your kid. Those two kids can’t play against each other in Fortnite. They won’t understand why that’s the case. And I would wager most parents don’t understand it either. A child might cry out “it’s not fair,” and that’s a fair point to be made to Sony.
Ultimately Sony has a very specific business model and this drama shouldn’t surprise anyone. I would be surprised if they change. They might bend on this one specific issue. But neither Nintendo nor Epic have been particularly vocal, either (keep in mind Epic stands to double their money on loot that players re-buy on other consoles). Pressure from Twitter folks who might own both consoles is going to fall on deaf ears. Sony is a Japanese company, and they don’t bend the way Western companies do when social media blows up. Also, Sony spending money on opening PSN APIs up for Fortnite costs them resources that they probably would rather be working on other things.
