2018 has undoubtedly been the year of Fortnite. The battle royale title has utterly exploded this past year, defying demographic boundaries, and even system boundaries, becoming one of the first games to feature cross-play between Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, and mobile devices. There's one notable exception there.

Sony declined to join the cross-play party, receiving waves of criticism in the process. The backlash was even covered in the mainstream media, due to Fortnite's popularity. Other developers of prominent online games chimed in with criticism also, notably Rocket League, and Microsoft noted that the reason the cross-play focused Bedrock Edition of Minecraft wasn't hitting PlayStation was due to this restriction.

Sony has since recanted, opening up Fortnite to cross-play for the first time while paving the way for other titles to join in the fun. So we got back in touch with Microsoft to inquire about the possibility of Minecraft players, finally, being able to link up across every major platform. Redmond's response was promising.

We believe in giving gamers the opportunity to play the games they want with the people they want. Whether that means working with our partners to deliver cross-network play with games like 'Rocket League' and 'Fortnite' or enabling cross-device play with the likes of Minecraft, we are supportive of new scenarios that enable more people to play and have fun together while gaming. We would love to bring players on PlayStation 4 into our Minecraft ecosystem as well but have nothing further to share at this time.

With Sony opening up the floodgates, it sounds as though it'll only be a matter of time before other major online titles begin to enjoy cross-platform functionality too. Hopefully, PS4 Minecraft players will get to join in on the fun sooner, rather than later.

On September 29, Microsoft is kicking off Minecon 2018, and we expect a wave of Minecraft news in the process. Perhaps we'll find out more then.

See Minecraft at Microsoft Store

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