Cross Play

You all know by now that Sony has changed its policy on cross-platform play, right? The bombshell dropped earlier in the week, but why did it take the company so long to implement the change? Well, according to PlayStation boss Shawn Layden, enabling cross-play isn't an easy process, despite what you may have read in comments sections on the internet.

"Now, enabling cross-play isn't just about flipping a switch and 'there you go' -- it's a very multi-dimensional kind of attribute or feature," Layden states on the latest PlayStation Blogcast. "So we had to look at it from a technical point of view, we have to work with our partners from a business point of view, we have to make sure that if we enable this, do we have the right customer service support, do we have the right messaging out there, do we have all these different things that you have to get in line, and it's rather ordinal. They have to go in a certain order to get them set up." Yeah, doesn't sound simple, does it?

Layden continues: "It's taken us longer, certainly than I would have wanted, but it took as long as it was gonna take to get it ready and get it done, which is why we were able to announce it last Tuesday, but also enable it at the same time." In other words, it sounds like Sony could have rolled out the announcement ahead of time, but it wanted to get it all sorted in one go.

So Sony may have been pigheaded in its approach to cross-play -- even though it made sense from the business perspective of the market leader -- but the Japanese giant has clearly put a lot of time and effort into changing its stance.

We've said it all along -- we doubt that enabling cross-play was ever as easy as some people liked to make out.

[source soundcloud.com]