Microsoft to Sony: "Balls in your Court"

Last month, Microsoft and the Xbox One team came out with a semi-stunning announcement: they had paved the way for cross-platform play in all of their online titles. Now, they didn’t say it that way, strictly--they were talking about creating a seamless network between Windows 10 PC’s and the Xbox One. But they mentioned as a pretty interesting sidebar that the functionality was open enough that any developers who wanted to code cross-platform functions into their game had the go-ahead from Microsoft. They were pretty vague about it, but they were looking Sony pretty squarely in the eye when saying it--I very much doubt the Ouya or the Wii U audiences have much a mind for Xbox One cross-play.

Well, it’s been a month (as the first two words of the article probably clued you in), and we have yet to see anyone take advantage of this amazing new combination of science and magic (sans the magic), and Sony certainly hasn’t commented on the matter yet. So, in an interview with Xbox's European boss Agostino Simonetta at EGX, Eurogamer asked what any of us would ask: what’s the deal?

His response? A dispassionate shrug.

“Rocket League is the first game - and it is a heavily network-orientated game… But yes, any title that wants to update their game to include cross-network play, any title that wants to launch soon and take advantage of that, we are ready… “

And he continued...

“Well as I said, it's always up to the developer to decide. We issued an open invitation. As far as we're concerned - we've made the announcement and we're ready - whoever wants to get on board. It remains an open invitation to any network that wants to do the same... We can only say: we're ready. We've done our bit and we welcome anyone who wants to take part.”

That was about the first third of the interview. So. I think he’s made his point abundantly clear: the ball's in Sony’s court, and they’ve done their part.

So, we’re all looking at you, Sony. Let’s make this happen.