John smedley, former president of sony online entertainment, talks about the cross game

Sony's official reason for not allowing cross-play between its PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One on Fortnite is to protect its young player base from seemingly adult influences on competing platforms. A reasoning that has been denied by a former Sony executive.

John Smedley claims that money is the real reason for Sony's rejection of crossplay between different consoles

John Smedley, former president of Sony Online Entertainment, has given his opinion on the controversy surrounding Sony's decision to avoid cross-play between users of its platforms and those of Microsoft and Mintendo. Smedley claims that when he was at Sony, the internally stated reason for this was money. The company did not like the idea of ​​someone buying something on an Xbox and then using it on a Playstation.

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According to Smedley, Sony's decision comes from a desire to encourage gamers to stay on their own platform, and even force new buyers to use a PS4 instead of an Xbox One or Nintendo Switch if their friends are already on board. from the PlayStation train.

Currently, Sony leads the generation of consoles with more than double sales than Microsoft's Xbox One, which puts the Japanese company in a privileged position when it comes to influencing video game developers. This also means Sony can afford not to offer backward compatibility, a major difference from the Xbox One.

Hopefully the situation will change in the next generation, as competition only benefits all players.

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