Eric Ravenscraft
Sony is the only place you can play Fortnite but can’t bring your progress from other consoles. That won’t be changing because Sony’s CEO doesn’t think you’d even want to play on another platform.
We’ve known that Sony doesn’t like the idea of sharing for a while. Currently, you can use the same account whether you’re playing on PC, the Xbox One, or the Switch. All your progress will carry over and you’ll have the same access to all your gear and items that you would on any other platform. That convenience ends when you fire up your PS4. There, you need an entirely new account with its own progress. But that’s fine because Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida thinks you wouldn’t want to play on any other console anyway.
On cross-platform, our way of thinking is always that PlayStation is the best place to play. Fortnite, I believe, partnered with PlayStation 4 is the best experience for users, that’s our belief. But actually, we already opened some games as cross-platform with PC and some others, so we decide based on what is the best user experience. That is our way of thinking for cross-platform.
Of course, there are plenty of other reasons Sony might not want to enable cross-play. They’re the market leader with tens of millions more consoles sold than either of their competitors, so they have some weight to throw around. Plus, Fortnite generates a lot of in-game revenue. Why let your users buy from someone else’s store where you don’t get a cut and then use those items on your platform? Why not just make your customers buy and earn all those items a second time on your platform and keep all that revenue for yourself?
It’s possible that Sony isn’t being quite so cynical with its refusal to play nicely with other platforms, but the result is still the same. If you want to play on multiple platforms and keep your progress across all of them, pick up a PC, Xbox, or Switch. If you just want one console and won’t swap, then you could go with the PS4.
Source: The Independent via The Verge
