Game developer Epic Games revealed this weekend that Microsoft is blocking Fornite PS4 versus Xbox One cross-play. The company has earlier announced that Fornite cross-play will soon be available for consoles and other gaming platforms.
Sony or Microsoft? What company should be blamed?
The decision of Microsoft to block Fortnite limits the ability of Xbox One players to play Fortnite in PS4 gaming console. Similarly, PS4 players would be able to play the game on all platforms except Xbox.
But Microsoft, in a statement published in Kotaku, has blamed either Sony or Epic Games.
“We’ve worked closely with Nintendo to allow cross-network play between Xbox One and Switch and our offer to do the same with PlayStation players still holds,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement over the weekend.
“For any other questions regarding Fortnite cross-network play between Xbox and PlayStation, please reach out to Epic or Sony directly,” the spokesperson added.
As of posting, both Sony and Epic Games have yet to release an official statement, reacting to Microsoft’s accusation.
But a quick check of the Microsoft’s statement over the weekend revealed otherwise. One can read a Twitter thread stating that Microsoft and Epic Games want to enable the cross-play between PS4 and Xbox One in Fortnite.
This begs the question, why Sony is not even involving itself in the issue? This is not the first time that Sony has blocked a game’s cross-play. Previously, Sony has blocked the cross-play of Rocket League and Minecraft between PS4 and Xbox.
Sony justified its decision to block the gameplay, saying the game”exposing what in many cases are children to external influences that it cannot manage or look after.”
Also back in 2011, Microsoft had refused to enable cross-play and blamed not being able to control the experience.
“Because we can’t guarantee this level of quality, or control the player experience on other consoles or gaming networks, we currently do not open our network to games that allow this cross-over capability,” a Microsoft spokesperson said at the time.
