In a recent interview with Game Informer, Sony’s worldwide studios chairman, Shawn Layden, attempted to dispel the rigorous policies of Sony’s cross-play mandate, which was that they didn’t allow for cross-play between home consoles due to security reasons. Now, Ryan is saying that all developers have to do is ask.

Layden said…

“All it takes is for publishers and developers who wish to permission it. As ever, just work with your PlayStation account manager, and they will walk you through the steps that we’ve learned through our partnership with Epic on how this works. I don’t believe right now there is any gating factor on that. I think they’re open to make proposals, because the Fortnite thing worked pretty well.”

What Layden is referring to is that initially Sony barred developers from implementing any sort of cross-play between home consoles. However, after fans and developers were begging for Sony to allow cross-play between PS4 and Switch, or PS4 and Xbox One, Sony finally conceded to the demands by starting a beta program for developers to allow them to implement cross-play in games like Fortnite. The program is still currently in the beta phase.

However, this directly contradicts what some developers have been told by Sony regarding cross-play. Specifically, the developers at Chucklefish, who Pushsquare quoted as saying…

“We made many requests for cross-play (both through our account manager and directly with higher ups) all the way up until release month. We were told in no uncertain terms that it was not going to happen. From our side, we can literally toggle a switch and have it working. Of course policy work might be more complicated for Sony. [I] just wanted to provide some balance on the issue and say that it certainly isn’t a question of developers having not contacted their account managers or having dropped the ball. We were told no.”

Well that certainly doesn’t make Layden’s claims look very apodictic.

In fact, based on the previous encounters that developers have had with Sony in trying to get cross-platform play implemented, it seems that what the Chucklefish developers mentioned is still more likely than what Layden has said.

However, with the beta currently underway for cross-platform play on Fortnite, maybe it will open the door and developers will, at some point, be allowed to ask and be granted the keys to cross-play on PlayStation devices between other consoles.

(Thanks for the news tip zac za)