"PlayStation is the Best," Says Sony on Fortnite Account Locking - The UpStream

"PlayStation is the Best," Says Sony on Fortnite Account Locking

posted Saturday Sep 1, 2018 by Scott Ertz

"PlayStation is the Best," Says Sony on Fortnite Account Locking

It was only 2 months ago when it looked like Sony was changing their cross-platform strategy. President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America Shawn Layden said,

We're hearing it. We're looking at a lot of the possibilities. You can imagine that the circumstances around that affect a lot more than just one game. I'm confident we'll get to a solution which will be understood and accepted by our gaming community, while at the same time supporting our business.

The biggest issue in PlayStation cross-platform gaming has been with the popular Fortnite. As anyone who has ever played the game on PlayStation knows, once you've done that, you can no longer use your account on a Microsoft Xbox or Nintendo Switch, though you can still use it on PC and mobile devices. Sony has never really given a good reason, or any reason, why this is the case, but Layden's comment and discussions with Microsoft last year suggested that perhaps Sony was finally getting the message that gamers and developers were annoyed by the policy.

Unfortunately, while the US division might have a better idea of what gamers want, corporate seems to have other ideas. Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida reportedly said that the company does not believe in cross-platform gameplay and is not interested in pursuing it on a grand scale.

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.

While it is encouraging to see that Sony is at least willing to consider cross-platform gaming on a case-by-case basis, it is not a great sign that they don't see anything wrong with preventing a player from experiencing a game on multiple platforms. If their platform truly were "the best place to play," they would not be afraid to let players see what the experience was like elsewhere without punishment. This still feels like the desperate moves of a company with a low self-image. Maybe they will grow out of this phase and join the rest of the gaming industry.

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