Posted in: Games, Nintendo, Video Games | Tagged: Fortnite, microsoft, nintendo, nintendo switch, PS4, sony, xbox

Nintendo and Microsoft Comment on Sony Not Playing Ball with Fortnite

Published Fri, 15 Jun 2018 08:45:18 -0500

As those of you who play Fortnite on the PS4 may have discovered, you have to make a new account on the Switch because Sony chose not to do cross-play, as predicted. Those actions have apparently earned the company some backlash from it's two biggest competitors as figureheads at both Microsoft and Nintendo weighed in on the company's constant refusal to essentially play ball with others in a future where cross-play is becoming more of the norm. Below are a couple quotes from GameIndustry.biz where Xbox's Phil Spencer and Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aimé on the matter.

Nintendo and Microsoft Comment on Sony Not Playing Ball with Fortnite — credit//Epic Games

"If you bought your son, your child, an Xbox, and I bought my child a PlayStation – and I'm just a parent, it's their birthday, whatever – and the kids want to go play Fortnite and they all of a sudden go home and can't play with each other… it doesn't feel like it helps the consumers," he said. "If it doesn't help the developers and it doesn't help the consumer, then it doesn't feel like it helps to grow gaming to me."

Spencer added: "I get the business side of it, and I'm not going to judge anybody else making their decisions because they've got to run their business… Our goal is to be relevant and important to every gamer on the planet. If people want to go buy someone else's console and play games there, great, as long as we're all leaning in to how do we make this business for everybody as vibrant as possible."

"You have companies like mine that encourage cross-play and enable cross-play. You have a developer and content owner that wants cross-play and is encouraging cross-play, and then you have the other platform holders and what it is that they do," he said

"And when it comes to other platform holders, as much as you have influence on other platform holders, I don't. And that's a decision that each of them are making, and some are supporting cross-play and some are not."

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