PS4 Cross-Play no Longer in Beta

Sometime this week, the PlayStation 4 Cross-Play “Beta” phase came to a close and Cross-Play was enabled as a feature for developers to take advantage of at will. I say “sometime this week” because this seems to have just happened, without Sony making any kind of announcement or fanfare. This very controversial, somewhat hotly anticipated feature, for which Sony was the last holdout among the Big Three console makers, is suddenly available to all with no big fuss or excitement?

According to an interview from Wired with PlayStation President and CEO Jim Ryan, that’s right! PlayStation apparently had no plans to formally announce this news, though I assume they told developers ahead of this so they can start making their games with cross-play in mind.

While it's not announcing the news explicitly, the PS4's cross-play efforts have officially moved out of the beta stage, meaning that the console can support cross-play on any titles that studios provide the functionality for.

So, starting with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which will release later this month, cross-play will be a thing available for everyone, to be utilized at the developer’s discretion. Cross-play started out in a beta phase back in September of 2018, with Fortnite: Battle Royale leading the charge (surprising nobody). Rocket League was soon to follow, joining the cross-play beta in January of 2019.

Ryan goes on to say,

"The track record of the incumbent platform winning the next time around is not a great one. So the major thrust of my executive energy is to avoid complacency."

That’s an interesting statement because it seems to be an admittance that winning this console generation doesn’t guarantee a win in the next round. Sony and PlayStation know that they’ve been on top for years, but they also know that to stay on top, they’re going to have to keep pushing forward, and maybe (finally) enabling cross-play is the first step.

In that same interview, Ryan also went into detail on how PS Now is changing, from the pricing structure to the quality of the games offered. Read more about that right here.