The vice president of Microsoft’s Xbox division has chimed in on the subject of PS4 and Xbox One cross-platform play, insisting that, despite Sony’s continued reluctance on the matter, the issue isn’t going away as far as gamers are concerned.
Tweeting in response to a Game Informer article on the subject, which didn’t exactly hold back in regards to their opinion on Sony’s stance on cross-platform play, Mike Ybarra commented:
“Our data shows people want larger multiplayer pools of people to play with and the choice to play together. This isn’t going away.”
This isn’t the first time that Microsoft has had an opinion on the matter, having previously described Sony’s decision to block cross-platform play as ‘unhealthy.’
Sony previously confirmed that it had blocked cross-platform play between Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch users following news that Minecraft and Rocket League would take advantage of the feature.
“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. 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,” Sony’s Jim Ryan explained at the time.
Despite this, the format holder has not completely ruled out the possibility of cross-platform play in the future, although right now it’s looking unlikely.