Nintendo is Actively Supporting Crossplay Between Consoles

Sony continues to be the sole holdout on the crossplay revolution, which, to gaming historians, might come as a bit of a surprise. You think that Nintendo, a company who famously does its own thing and tries to maintain as much control over itself as possible, would be more hesitant to participate in cross-play than them. And yet, in a recent investor's meeting, not only did Nintendo assure people that crossplay was the future, they doubled down and said they would be happy to help developers ensure their games can be played across multiple consoles.

Susumu Tanaka, Senior Executive Officer, had this to say:

"Crossplay basically comes about from conversations between publishers and platform holders. We are inclined to do what we can to help publishers incorporate crossplay when that is what they want. The other parties involved also have a say in whether we are able to reach this outcome or not, so we will continue to discuss it with them."

That said, the question about crossplay actually came from a misunderstanding from one of the investors, who was asking if crossplay meant that Nintendo games would be showing up on other consoles. That was something Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima was quick to say would never, ever, ever happen. So if you for some reason thought Nintendo was just moments away from releasing the next Metroid game on PC, I’m afraid this is your reality check.

For what it’s worth, there are only a handful of games on the Switch that actually support crossplay, but they’re pretty big hitters: we’re talking Rocket League, Minecraft, and Fortnite here. That list will probably grow larger on the indie side of things than the triple-A side, considering how well the Switch does with third-party triple-A titles, but it’s a lot better than what Sony is doing.

Which is nothing.