Gears of War 4 is adding ranked cross-play between Xbox One and Windows 10

By Dan Thorp-Lancaster
published

Gears of War 4 players on Xbox One and Windows 10 will soon be able to jump into ranked play together with cross-play. After enabling cross-play on the Social Quickplay playlist earlier this year, Gears developer The Coalition has announced (via OnMSFT) plans to bring the feature to ranked play later this year.

According to The Coalition, the move is in response to a shortage of players in ranked play on Windows 10:

When we released Crossplay support in Social, our players on Windows 10 flocked to the playlist to play in the broadest playerbase possible. Since that time, Windows 10 players have found it increasingly difficult to find matches in Core and Competitive, so we've been working on solutions as quickly as possible to provide an improved experience on the platform.

The change isn't rolling out, immediately, however. While The Coalition previously noted that it hadn't seen much of a competitive advantage for either platform in its cross-play tests, the developer still wants to make sure that anyone playing on a console has the option to opt out of cross-play for ranked matches. When the feature rolls out later this year, Xbox One players will have access to a toggle to turn cross-play off for ranked play. Social, competitive warm up and special events will remain cross-play no matter what, however.

See at the Xbox Store (opens in new tab)

Dan Thorp-Lancaster
Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl. 

10 Comments
  • and i hope with this, true m/kb support on xbox one because there isn't no point to do this pitting console controllers vs pc m/kb.  
  • Not really. If you suck, you suck. If it's ranked, youll end up with other people that suck.
  • And if you put mouse and keyboard on console, then the ability to have a fair playing level for any controller users is gone. This system allows you to decide to stay out of the PC-inclusive matches, while your idea forces console players to switch inputs or face a disadvantage. You're now killing the convenience of console gaming.
  • Allowing m/kb support removes fragmentation.  It is up to each player if they want to go in with a controller.  No need to have options of matchmaing systems tyring to recognize inputs.     let everybody play with each other and let everybody choose whether they want to play controller or m/kb.  having options to match up specific inputs results in fragementation and reduces the playerbase.  A playerbase for gears that is already low.  
  • If they dont have a way to detect input methods to prevent cross play between controller and M+KB then this is going to fail pretty hard
  • Hence being able to toggle this on or off. If you want M+KB play on PC or get an adapter thta will let you use M+KB. The advantage is yours to be had.
  • Feedback from the first try mixing console and pc seemed to go well. I hope they do this with rainbow 6 siege, especially of the player base starts to dwindle. Right now the player base seems strong though.
  • Great news!!.. Cross-play with opt out options needs to be the standard for Xbox Play Anywhere games moving forward.. The unification of the install bases should be a core goal here
  • agreed, along with all input options.  
  • I was hoping that the recent gears of war tournament would have been on pc but it was only on xbox. Esports on PC is definitely where most of money is at. Not that I'm scoffing at 200k by any means but GOW on PC (or at least cross play) I think would draw bigger crowds.