CEO John Smedley has given his views and opinions in regards to the possibility of cross-play for The Agency with PC users and PlayStation 3 users. Unsurprisingly he finds it unlikely that this will happen due to several reasons given below. Smedley sat down and spoke with Next Gen Biz about the upcoming title and the issues revolving around the ability to allow cross-platform play, here are some of the things he had to say:
“If I was a betting man, I’d bet that we don’t allow it,” said Smedley of cross-platform play. “You’ll still be able to log in with your character on either [PS3 or PC].”
Despite that opinion, SOE still plans on attempting a testing stage where the cross-play is given the opportunity to be proven beneficial. Chances are it won’t due to the probably advantage that keyboard and mouse players will have over console owners just using a standard controller. Another example of this is Unreal Tournament III, where a plethora of players choose to use the keyboard and mouse combo over the controller it usually has its obvious advantages.
“We’re going to start play-testing that soon, but I’ll be honest: I think that our expectations are that we’re going to decide that we won’t have cross-platform play, simply because of the difference in [control schemes]. Would the mouse player have a unique advantage? Would we have to make the auto-aiming system on the console a lot better to compensate for that? That would take some of the skill element away on the console. I’m guessing it’s going to be where you can log into your character on either platform, but they don’t cross-play. But we are honestly going to give it a try.”
Another big-time player in the MMO genre is NC Soft. Their North American boss, Chris Chung, feels that it wouldn’t be a plausible choice to cross-platform an MMO in general, "…Personally, I don’t really believe that you could build a top notch game play that really works across platforms.”
Obviously as PlayStation owners, a lot of us have experienced the cross-play of Final Fantasy XI and it worked for the majority of the experience on a great level. So this issue can be worked on and made beneficial to the gamer, however, to a standardized shooter game like The Agency is shaping up to be, it obviously is appearing to be a lot more difficult.