Ark: Survival Evolved is releasing soon for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, but it doesn’t look like everyone will be able to play together. Jeremy Stieglitz of Wildcard has revealed via Twitter that Ark will not have cross-platform play between the PlayStation 4 and other consoles. This is not the first game that Sony has disallowed cross-platform play on, as Rocket League and Minecraft also suffer from the same decision.
Here’s the tweet involving the decision:
We have it working internally, but currently Sony won't allow it 🙁
— Jeremy Stieglitz (@jeremystieglitz) August 18, 2017
Gameindustry.biz sums up the difficulties with Sony and cross-platform play (in the context of Minecraft) pretty well:
Speaking to Eurogamer after E3, specifically with regards to cross-platform play for Minecraft, Sony’s global marketing boss Jim Ryan said: “We have a contract with the people who go online with us, that we look after them and they are within the PlayStation curated universe. Exposing what in many cases are children to external influences we have no ability to manage or look after, it’s something we have to think about very carefully.”
Shortly afters, Xbox chief Phil Spencer dismissed this argument, adding: “The fact that somebody would make an assertion that somehow we’re not keeping Minecraft players safe I found – not only from a Microsoft perspective, but from a game industry perspective – I don’t know why that has to become the dialogue,” he said. “That doesn’t seem healthy for anyone.
“We would never put Minecraft in a place where we felt like we weren’t keeping our players safe.”
Spencer maintains “the door is open” for cross-platform play between Xbox One and PlayStation 4 but it appears Sony is still unsure about stepping through it.
Lets hope that Sony changes its tune about cross-platform play soon.
Ark: Survival Evolved releases August 29 on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
[Source: Gameindustry.biz, Twitter]
