Half a year ago, Sony finally introduced cross-platform play to the PS4, after years of refusing to give in to public demand. Currently, only a handful of games including Fortnite and Rocket League support the feature, which led to some game developers accusing Sony of playing favorites among game creators.

Dave Bars, founder of BARS Studios whose game called SHiRO 011 recently entered early access on Steam, sympathized with Sony stating that it is understandable from a business perspective that the studio is reluctant to fully enable PS4 cross-play because it doesn't want to share its player base to its competitors. Several months ago, Sony faced backlash when it claimed that cross-play is already available to every developer, and all they had to do is ask. However, as soon as the news broke out, several developers and publishers disputed Sony's claim that cross-play is available to everyone.

Now, Bars recently spoke to Gaming Bolt and revealed that, while the studio understands the concerns of players and some developers, Sony's reluctance to go all out with cross-platform play makes perfect sense for obvious business reasons. "I am buying a PlayStation because all my friends are playing PlayStation is one key argument that has a great impact on sales. It makes no sense for Sony to renounce that since they have significantly higher sales figures than Xbox," Bars said.

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While Bars understands Sony's reluctance to fully-integrate cross-play on the PS4, the developer revealed that hopefully, all console manufacturers would make cross-play a "staple-feature" for the next-generation of consoles. Given the recent unveiling of the hardware specifications of Sony's next-generation console, it is interesting to see whether the company is planning to introduce cross-play to the PS5.

A couple of days ago, Sony confirmed that the PS5 will not be released in the next 12 months, which puts the earliest possible release date in May 2020 or later, which is understandable given that the company still hasn't fully revealed the upcoming console. As of the moment, it is unclear how Sony plans to reveal the PS5 features that the console will offer players, but one thing is for sure, it won't be at E3 2019.

Source: Gaming Bolt