Epic offered to make Sony look like heroes in exchange for enabling crossplay in Fortnite May 4, 2021 01:32 EDT with 19 comments
A couple of years ago, Sony found itself in hot water with gamers criticizing it for blocking crossplay even though developers were supporting it across Microsoft and Nintendo consoles as well as PC. This began with
Now, some confidential emails between Epic Games and Sony have confirmed that the reason that the latter was blocking crossplay primarily for financial reasons.
An email (pictured above) - procured by The Verge - from Epic’s vice president of business development Joe Kreiner indicates what Epic Games was offering in return for Sony enabling crossplay in
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The ongoing legal battle between Epic Games and Apple is only just getting started, potentially leading to lots of insider information regarding how the videogame industry operates. As part of the case newly released documents discuss Epic Games’ battle royale title
Fortnite and Sony Interactive Entertainment’s (SIE) decision to block PlayStation 4 crossplay functionality in 2018. As part of Epic’s plan to persuade Sony, the company suggested making a VR launch title for its next headset.
As reported by The Verge, confidential emails between Joe Kreiner, Epic’s vice president of business development, and Gio Corsi, Sony’s senior director of developer relations (at the time) highlight Epic Games’ desire to enable crossplay, something Sony wasn’t keen on doing at the time. Inside a raft of proposals, Kreiner suggested: “Epic’s willing to explore more items – maybe we commit to a game at the launch of your next VR platform?”
There’s about a story an hour coming out of the landmark Epic V. Apple case due to the enormous amount of both publicly released and leaked documents hitting the internet.
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Tuesday, May 04, 2021
The Epic Games versus Apple court case has ended up bringing to light a number of documents that have offered interesting insight into how companies like Microsoft and Sony operate. Yesterday, we shared he revelation that Sony receives compensation from developers and publishers to offset revenue reduction stemming from enabling cross-play. The court documents further reveal that Sony was completely against the idea of enabling cross-play and was practically forced by Epic Games to give in.
In a pair of emails shared by The Verge’s Tom Warren on Twitter, former Sony Interactive Entertainment Senior Director Gio Corsi wrote to Epic Games and stated that no one has been able to explain how cross-play benefits PlayStation. He also dismissed the idea of cross-play being a valuable feature regardless of “the size of the title.”