I understand the principle but specifically how does it work?
Is it about servers? Do all consoles have the ability to support cross-play, and its just a matter of the developers working to include it in a game? What are the challenges involved in cross-play?
In: Technology
All internet connected devices supports cross-play. What needs to support cross-play for it to work in games is the game itself and the supporting servers. So long as the game is programmed to be able to communicate with all platforms at once, cross-play is possible.
Everything can support cross-play, every console/pc with connection to the internet atleast, but its up to the game devs.
If the game was originaly made with steam multiplayer api and they used steam servers, it will take time to port it over to another server platform/api.
But in general, its allways possible to make a game crossplay, but sometimes its not easy/cost-effective to do it. For example, the game engine used might not be compatible woth the desired multiplayer api.
Dont take this as 100%, as i have little experience in game dev.
Former game developer here,
For a given online game released on console and PC, there is no impediment for cross-play. The games both almost certainly communicate using the exact same data protocol, and there is nothing inherent about different client ends (console or PC) that preclude one from inter-operating with the other through a shared middle-man (the server). The platforms are often divided artificially, typically through an identifier in the protocol, if cross-play is undesirable, the server and other clients would be otherwise completely unaware of what platform you’re playing from.
Cross-play may be denied for the sake of licensing agreements or game balance. Maybe Sony doesn’t want PC players mixing with their console players. Often cross-play is denied for game balance. PC gamers often have play advantages over console gamers. A mouse and keyboard tends to be faster, more responsive, and more precise than a controller, for example. PC gamers can also modify their graphical settings to their greatest, most performant advantage, where a console is fixed. Also, cheating is more prolific on PC. The desire is to ensure as much as possible that the play experience is as even and level as possible.
As long as all the games are the same, it’s only an artificial impediment. For some games, controlling with a mouse+keyboard is just much more effective than using a controller, so the developers split out the different players into separate groups for a more level playing field.
For other games you might have a game released on a lower-power console which can’t support everything the game released on the higher-power console can. This means you need to split out the players to avoid causing problems on the lower-power console.
>Is it about servers?
yes
>Do all consoles have the ability to support cross-play
theoretically, yes. if they support online play, then they could update the console with new, cross-play servers. the game itself, might or might not need an update from the maker.
>and its just a matter of the developers working to include it in a game?
no – the pc version of the game has servers controlled by the game maker or the players. console servers are controlled by the maker of the console. both parties would have to work together to combine servers or get the existing servers to cross talk.
>What are the challenges involved in cross-play?
mostly the cooperation thing, but in a lot of cases, like first person shooters or games that need quick move and click responses, consoles with controllers are at a distinct disadvantage to mouse and keyboard, so cross play with pc isn’t really a good deal for them anyway.
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