Xbox’s Phil Spencer, Fortnite Team Want Fortnite PS4 And Xbox One Cross-Play

The pressure is heating up for Sony to come to the table to talk about cross-play opportunities.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer and the development team behind the popular Fortnite want to see a cross-play option between Xbox One and Playstation 4 players, after both brands have developed cross-play relationships with PC and mobile.

Microsoft has been open to the idea for a few years and now has developers backing up their push to get a resistant Sony to discuss options.

Up to this point, Sony has not been interested in as Playstation executive Jim Ryan explained back in 2017 while speaking to Eurogamer.

“It’s certainly not a profound philosophical stance we have against this” Ryan said while also stating that Sony is “always” interested in discussing these ideas with companies.

But an Xbox relationship?

“Unfortunately, it’s a commercial discussion between ourselves and other stakeholders, and I’m not going to get into the detail of that on this particular instance.”

Ryan then pointed to the concern about allowing it’s own players, which include children, to connect to a network outside of theirs.

“We’ve got to be mindful of our responsibility to our install base. Minecraft–the demographic playing that, you know as well as I do, it’s all ages but it’s also very young,” he 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.”

While there is an openness to discuss options, it doesn’t seem like Sony is in any rush to do so.

However, with some momentum behind the pleas of gamers and companies to look into making this idea a reality, things could progress a bit quicker.