Multi-platform gaming binge reaches new level with ‘Fortnite’ frenzy
UNDER pressure from fans and competitors, “Fortnite” drove Sony to reconsider its stance toward cross-platform multiplayer — or prove that every rule has an exception.
Free 100-player action game “Fortnite” expanded in a big way in 2018, having attracted tacit celebrity endorsements from the worlds of sport and music — soccer players were recreating its celebration dances at the FIFA World Cup — as the video game moved from home console and computer to mobile and then Nintendo Switch.
That expansion ended up having big repercussions for a decades-old policy that kept console players separated by brand and kept momentum up for whichever manufacturer was selling the most consoles.
For “Fortnite” players coming in from the mobile sphere, that segregation was already something of an oddity; a general air of device agnosticism allows games, apps, and social network services to function across iOS and Android.
But when “Fortnite” launched on the Nintendo Switch in June, players were annoyed and disappointed to find they couldn’t use their original “Fortnite” accounts if they had already played on PlayStation 4, grating against a sense of dividecrossing community baked into the “Fortnite” experience.
PlayStation had allowed crossplatform between its own consoles, where applicable, from 2013; Xbox introduced a Play Anywhere policy for Xbox One and Windows 10 PC games in 2016.
It took two months of intense pressure over the enormously popular “Fortnite” for Sony to roll back on a policy that Microsoft and Nintendo, both trailing PlayStation’s total current console sales, had very publicly softened with a special “Minecraft” update in June.
How far that “Fortnite” change applies to other games is something that remains to be seen. — Relaxnews