Cross-Play has been a big talking point for many players across the world who desperately want to play their favourite titles with friends that maybe own a different platform to them. While many developers and companies have come to the table and met this demand, Sony has been infamously against the notion of implementing the PlayStation into any kind of consistent Cross-Play program, instead offering many developers a beta version to implement, seen most recently in Fortnite. While many have protested Sony’s stubbornness over the matter, Dave Bars, founder of BARS Studio has stated his sympathies towards Sony, citing their negligence of Cross-Play as sensible “from a business perspective”.
In an interview with Gaming Bolt, Bars stated that he understands Sony’s perspective and that it was reasonable that as market leaders they would want to compel people to buy their console over any competitors. He cites numerous ways Sony has succeeded at doing this including “Exclusive games” and “brand sympathy”, but his biggest reasoning has nothing to do with the hardware, but rather the social scenes around the hardware.
“All my friends are playing on console ‘xy’. Once you decide to buy the other console, you decide not being able to play with your friends”, states Bars. “’I am buying a PlayStation because all my friends are playing on a PlayStation’ is one key argument that has a great impact on sales”. Bars holds this as the mean reason Cross-Play would be a bad idea for Sony to invest in as it would mean players were less likely to be drawn to the PlayStation but rather any console because of the possibilities afforded by Cross-Play.
He acknowledges that as disappointing as this is for players, it makes a great deal of business sense for Sony to retain whatever audience they can rather than diluting potential sales because of how accessible playing with friends could be with the addition of Cross-Play. “…you want to play with your friends and there is nothing more disappointing than not being able to play with them because they use a different platform”.
BARS Studio’s game SHiRO 011, a high-octane multiplayer shooter, is currently in early access on Steam.
Last Updated: April 30, 2019
Pieter Kruger
April 30, 2019 at 17:32
$ony Play$tation….of course it’s about the money and there’s nothing wrong with that! They need to make money just like every other big corp out there. But cross play is coming, it’s unstoppable and Sony will fall in line & they will still be fine…..a bigger concern for them should be their censoring policies, THAT could backfire big time!
City-Hunter
May 1, 2019 at 01:43
“Bars holds this as the mean reason Cross-Play would be a bad idea for Sony to invest in as it would mean players were less likely to be drawn to the PlayStation but rather any console because of the possibilities afforded by Cross-Play” What Bars doesn’t take into account, is the level of economic income from households & individuals, and as any investor who percieves a coming trend and it’s risk/profitability, it would be very unwise for Sony & related associates not to foresee this.
They used to say that consoles would one day be at the same level as a Personal Computer, now it is like that. The following step would be for those consoles to bear the same level of baroquization/customizable hardware (add or remove USB ports, data, like with a PC); in order to add the same benefits of it’s counterpart/direct competition.