Rocket League cross-play will take "patience" to get sorted
Political football.
Rocket League developer Psyonix has always been a major proponent of console cross-play, and now the feature has been implemented in Fortnite, the studio has issued an update on the future of cross-play in its footballing car game.
In a Reddit post, Psyonix CEO Dave Hagewood said Rocket League had been built as "a cross-platform game from the very beginning". Alluding to the Fortnite cross-play news, the CEO expressed delight he could "now acknowledge that all the major consoles are making progress towards a truly all-platform cross-platform play experience".
Despite the overwhelming positivity of the statement, it sounds like full console cross-play may still take some time to arrive in Rocket League. According to Hagewood, "cross-platform play is not something Psyonix and Rocket League can do on its own". The CEO added that implementing cross-play "takes the substantial cooperation and coordination of many partners, most notably the platform holders themselves". For this reason, Hagewood advised players "have some patience" as Psyonix works to fulfill its vision of a "truly unified Rocket League community".
We're at an interesting point in the cross-play story. While Fortnite currently has the feature, Sony has been eager to emphasise this is merely a beta test program. PlayStation Worldwide Studios boss Shawn Layden recently stated the company is focused on "prov[ing] that this is all holding together," but players can "anticipate seeing other games in the [cross-play] service over time." It's all a little vague.
From the statements issued by developers in the past few days, it seems cross-play negotiations with Sony are still in the early stages. Activision recently spoke to IGN on the topic, who said there was still plenty of work to be done "both on our side and the platform side to understand whether cross-play might be integrated into our other games". Microsoft also told Eurogamer it would "love to bring players on PlayStation 4 into [their] Minecraft ecosystem," but the company currently has "nothing further to share at this time".
We'll have to keep a close eye on Sony and developers in the coming weeks. As part of my investigation into cross-play, I found most developers I spoke to were in favour of expanding the feature. With the ball very much in Sony's court, I'm left with two main questions: who will be next to gain console cross-play, and how long until that happens?