Former Sony Developer Spills the Beans on Anti-Cross-Play Stance: It’s All About the Benjamins

Sony’s behavior towards cross-platform gaming has been a source of major controversy in the video game industry. The latest issue to add to the growing pile is how the accounts of “Fortnite Battle Royale” players are locked to the PlayStation 4 if they made it on the console. This means that they can’t play on the PC or the Nintendo Switch using the same account. According to a former executive at the company, money is the reason for this decision.

The developer in question is John Smedley, who is the former president of Sony Online Entertainment, now Daybreak Game Company. In a recent tweet, he encouraged the community to keep putting pressure on Sony to allow for cross-platform play. This was apparently in response to the matter of Sony locking "Fortnite" players to the PS4.

"[I]f we keep the pressure up this problem goes away,” the tweet reads. “[By the way] 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. [S]imple as that. [D]umb reason, but there it is.”

As Eurogamer notes, this revelation is hardly surprising, with other Sony executives providing hints in the past. The most notable of these was the comment of PlayStation global sales and marketing head Jim Ryan back in E3 2017. When asked about the company’s stance against cross-platform play, Ryan said that it was "a commercial discussion between ourselves and other stakeholders."

This anti-cross-play sentiment is in direct contrast with what developers have been hoping for as well. There appears to be a genuine desire among studios to allow for cross-platform interactions among gamers. Sony is the only remaining company that seems adamant about not caving into these demands.