Cross-play, as in playing games together with players on other platforms, are now a major talk thanks to the very public support of the initiative seen in the announcement of cross-play for Minecraft and Rocket League at E3 this year. But there is one company that have done this years ago and it’s Square Enix.
Final Fantasy XI was one of the first games to support cross-platform play (it holds the Guinness World Record as the “First Cross-Platform Online RPG) and their latest MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV continues that tradition with cross-play with PC, PS4 and PS3 (though as the release of the new Stormblood expansion, the PS3 version is no longer supported).
FFXIV director Naoki Yoshida wants to continue this cross-play feature if the MMO is to be made available on the Xbox One and Switch. There are already talks with both platform holders on bringing the MMO along with cross-play support.
“We would love for as many players to be on FFXIV as possible,” he said in an interview with Kotaku.
“Conversations have been had with Mr. Phil Spencer of Microsoft, and the upper management teams of Nintendo. But I have proposed a condition every time I speak with any platform manufacturers. It’s that the game has to have the capability of cross-platform play.”
Supporting cross-play isn’t an easy deal from the platform holders perspective. The issue Yoshida pointed out with the difficulties on this is if whether they have the policies to support online services like how patches are implemented or online regulations.
“Some of our external parties’ regulations don’t have MMORPGs in mind in terms of how they’re regulating their online activities,” Yoshida added. “Those can become a hurdle when we consider operating FFXIV for an extended period of time, and so when I talk to those first-party companies, I ask them, ‘Do you have the capability to prepare for that, do you have the resolve that you’re going to make sure to take responsibility and take care of those, do you have that willingness?’”
Microsoft and Nintendo are in support of cross-play as seen at E3 where players on both platforms can now play Minecraft and Rocket League. Now the only hurdle left is to convince Sony to support cross platform play with other consoles rather than just PCs.