Cross-play: Rocket League is doing it now… time for Elite Dangerous?

[Justinian Octavius]

With Rocket League beta now also cross-play across PC, PS4 & X-box it would make sense for a game like Elite Dangerous with a single shared galaxy to make the move too imho.

CMDR Justinian Octavius

 

[BinakAlgo]

The crossplay is not something that devs or even publishers can decide about it, for them, all games would be cross-platform always. The problem is with the console makers, especially Sony who are still vying for total monopoly in the video game market. Developers and publishers of the big famous games are pushing Sony to allow this but mostly (or only) for their games. I don't know if suddenly Sony and MS are going to have a change of hearth and allow allow crossplay in all games but I doubt it.

So, it is more a problem of economics and profit than programming.

 

[Killnine]

Sony has indeed gone on record saying that they will allow crossplay: https://kotaku.com/sony-is-finally-allowing-cross-play-on-the-ps4-1829326043
Fortnite is already crossplay and at least Rocket League and Minecraft are reported/rumoured to follow suit.

I'd totally want Elite to allow crossplay as well, but there are a few complications... for example controls. PC players have a very clear advantage.

 

[Misty_Dark]

I'd totally want Elite to allow crossplay as well, but there are a few complications... for example controls. PC players have a very clear advantage.

Well XBox has very similar controller support as PC, although not as many variants, but the offer all same basic options
Keyboard + Mouse
HOTAS
Controller/Gamepad


And almost the same goes for PS4, where Keyboard and mouse support does not sees to extend to games, at least not yet, but there are several adapters. HOTAS options is available here as well.



Then we have if Elite Dangerous supports all of the available options available...

 

[ZeroAi]

The crossplay is not something that devs or even publishers can decide about it... So, it is more a problem of economics and profit than programming.

...but there are a few complications... for example controls. PC players have a very clear advantage.

Hey guys,

As the OP eluded to, this has already be solved by other games.

First, most cross play enabled games allow you to choose who you play with - same platform or all platforms. This is how they got around people worrying about one platform having an unfair advantage.

That said, the XBOX One now officially supports Mouse and Keyboard, and has a Hotas option, so really it has the same controls as a PC.

Next, cross play between PC and XBOX can be implemented by ANY developer as long as they follow the guidelines like Fortnight, Rocket League, and so many other games have done.

So Frontier could implement cross play if they wanted to, but I'm sure doing so would cost development time which they probably don't want to spend on cross play.

But if they did implement cross play with the XBOX, that would give them a good case to also implement it with PS4.

Personally, I really wish they would implement it!

o7

 

[BinakAlgo]

Maybe I wasn't clear enough: Sony doesn't want crossplay, it has only allowed it on certain games, like Fornite because of the huge popularity of them and it became a profitable option for them. This has made angry several developers. For example, Bethesda sent an ultimatum to Sony with Fallout 76 threaten them to not release it in PS4 if they didn't allow cross-play with the other consoles, Microsoft was on board with crossplaying only if PS4 also did. They reached a compromise and said that the cross-play was going to be allowed "later" after launch, but due to the poor reception of that game I think that the "later" is going to be a "never".

As I said, this is more about public relationships and negotiation than about programming.

 

[Misty_Dark]

Maybe I wasn't clear enough: Sony doesn't want crossplay, it has only allowed it on certain games, like Fornite because of the huge popularity of them and it became a profitable option for them. This has made angry several developers. For example, Bethesda sent an ultimatum to Sony with Fallout 76 threaten them to not release it in PS4 if they didn't allow cross-play with the other consoles, Microsoft was on board with crossplaying only if PS4 also did. They reached a compromise and said that the cross-play was going to be allowed "later" after launch, but due to the poor reception of that game I think that the "later" is going to be a "never".

As I said, this is more about public relationships and negotiation than about programming.

exactly this.