The PlayStation 4 is now fully open to the cross-play option

Developers can no longer blame Sony as a company that does not want to open up the possibility of playing multiplayer networking independently across platforms.

Sony quietly announced in an interview with Wired that support for the cross-play option on the PlayStation 4 was out of beta. This means that all existing and future games can now, at least in theory, allow players on the PlayStation 4 to play online multiplayer against players from other consoles or with them.

So far, only a few games on the PlayStation 4 have made this option possible, including Fortnite, PUBG, Rocket League, Dauntless, Paladins and Spacelords. The upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will be the first game in the premium title category to be launched with a cross-play option on the PlayStation console.

Sony says it's all up to the game creators now. It will be interesting to see if this is true and whether more games will finally open up their multiplayer components and thus increase the player base.

For Sony, this was a necessary move that came after numerous criticisms and tweaks by Microsoft and Nintendo. According to PlayStation President Jim Ryan, enabling cross-play was necessary to prevent users from creating aversion to the platform, or to repeat the scenario where the dominant console loses its edge in the next generation. Sony once burned itself with a previous PlayStation 3 experience, so the PlayStaton branch chief wants to make sure that this scenario does not happen again with the PlayStation 5.