Earlier this week at E3, Microsoft made the big announcement that Minecraft will support cross-play with the Nintendo Switch version of the game. While Microsoft is hopeful that Sony will get on board, it hasn’t happened yet, and now a Sony executive has explained one reason why.
Speaking to Eurogamer, PlayStation executive Jim Ryan said, “It’s certainly not a profound philosophical stance we have against this,” adding that Sony is “always” interested in talking with companies about things like this.
So why is there no cross-play between PS4 and Xbox One yet? Ryan said, “Unfortunately, it’s a commercial discussion between ourselves and other stakeholders, and I’m not going to get into the detail of that on this particular instance.”
Ryan went on to suggest that Sony is concerned about what could go wrong when allowing its own players, some of which could be children, to connect to a network outside of its own.
“We’ve got to be mindful of our responsibility to our install base. Minecraft–the demographic playing that, you know as well as I do, it’s all ages but it’s also very young,” he said. “We have a contract with the people who go online with us, that we look after them and they are within the PlayStation curated universe. Exposing what in many cases are children to external influences we have no ability to manage or look after, it’s something we have to think about very carefully.”
You can read the full interview here at Eurogamer.
Microsoft’s Dave McCarthy told GameSpot at E3 this week that the company has had discussions with Sony about cross-play, but Sony is “not quite there yet.”
“My hope is that they join the party as well because I think it’s an awesome thing to do for gamers,” he said.
In March 2016, Microsoft publicly announced that it was open to connecting Xbox Live to other gaming networks, including PlayStation Network and Nintendo’s own online service. Sony later suggested it was open to this, but it has not happened yet, and it doesn’t seem like it will soon.