PlayStation has recently softened its tone on crossplay for games such as Fortnite, Rocket League, and Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War, but the gaming powerhouse hasn't always been supportive of playing with gamers outside of its ecosystem.
According to a document that recently surfaced during the Epic Games vs Apple legal battle, PlayStation was resistant to crossplay on PS4. Epic Games pleaded with Sony to enable crossplay in confidential emails in the months leading up to Sony's decision to block crossplay in 2018.
Epic Games threw out seven distinct ideas to sweeten the pot for PlayStation enabling crossplay, offering to brand its E3 presence with PlayStation, exclusive skins for PlayStation Plus subscribers, and to hail PlayStation as the heroes of crossplay, but Sony declined according to leaked emails.
Some offers Epic Games made to PlayStation in exchange for cross-platform play included the popular development tool Unreal Engine 4 as the Epic owns UE4. One offer was to extend Sony's companywide license to use Unreal Engine 4, and another would've seen deeper integration between Sony's eSports API and UE4. Epic Games would've announced crossplay in tandem with PlayStation had this deal gone through in an effort to make Sony appear as the heroes of cross-platform play.
Sony remained resistant to crossplay for PS4 despite Nintendo and Microsoft both enabling gamers to play across Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. While Sony has officially softened its stance on crossplay, another recently surfaced document shows how much the company is charging developers for the cross-platform feature.
Part of PlayStation's resistance to crossplay for Fortnite back in 2018 was hinted at in emails between Epic and Sony, stating it was the most popular platform to play the battle royale at the time. Sony’s senior director of developer relations in 2018 responded to Epic Games' crossplay pitch by saying no matter how big a game is, the feature isn't a "slam dunk."
PlayStation's stance on crossplay back in 2018 was stationary as the leaked emails between Epic Games and Sony show that PlayStation declined multiple offers from other companies because it found cross-console play wouldn't improve the PlayStation business in any way. Due to the crossplay cut that PlayStation is allegedly taking, it appears that Sony has discovered a way for PlayStation to benefit from crossplay more than Microsoft and Nintendo.
Gamers have been playing specific titles with each other through cross-platform play between Nintendo Switch, PC, Xbox, and PlayStation for a while now, but the feature is fresh thanks to resistance from Sony. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney recently confirmed that PlayStation is the only platform that charges developers for crossplay, creating an incentive for them, but hindering developers from reaching a wider community.
Source: The Verge