Title: Sony's Fortnite crossplay account block is now covered by mainstream press [Sony Responds]
Reason: User Banned (2 Days): System Wars; attempting to shift blame for one company's policy decisions onto another
The problem is Microsoft, not Nintendo, they are just caught up in it at the moment. Why is Microsoft the problem? Well look at their current strategic direction. That is, games as a service, buy once, play on console, PC, maybe a phone (if that is still a thing) and enjoy the same game, with your friends. Sounds great right? Well one issue with that, is that gamers playing online on their xbox console are paying for the privilege, while everyone else in the exact same match kind of laughs at them. This, as you might expect, is something that is going to change one way or another. So two options here, either PC gamers start paying for online games, and good fucking luck with that, or xbox gamers start getting online play for free. This is Microsoft's call and they have the finances to make this strategic call at any time. Sony do not. If Microsoft do pull the plug on paid online gaming then this leaves Sony in a bad spot. They can't just raise the price of windows by 0.001 to recoup the costs, they want that revenue stream to continue. Currently they might be able to get away with continuing to charge by offering PS+ style games, maybe something streaming, I'm not sure. But they have options to continue to ask their fans to pay while Microsoft do their own thing. The problem is if they have cross play on a heap of huge titles? Well those options massively diminish. It is one thing to offer a different service at a different price, it is very different to offer the exact same service, side by side and asking your own players to pay up. Unlike the current state on PC, console gamers would likely take notice of that. This leaves us with the current state of play. If Sony allow cross play with Microsoft, they hand them a huge strategic advantage. When will this change? I'd expect as soon as Microsoft show their hand for next gen. When the Xbox one two launches and has free online play, they'll have some very big decisions to make. So yes it isn't good, but I think playing the waiting game is the only call right now.
Link: https://www.resetera.com/posts/9272354/
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