Microsoft responds to Sony's reasons for blocking cross-play with Xbox Live

Sykikal · Jun 15, 2017

Microsoft announced that Minecraft would have cross-play compatibility with the PC and Nintendo Switch, however, Sony has so far refused to let PSN players interact with players on Nintendo Switch or Xbox Live. In an earlier interview with Eurogamer, Sony representative Jim Ryan stated that Sony has to think carefully about exposing children to external influences.

Eurogamer: Well, you must see that PlayStation owners are upset. They want to play with Switch owners, PC owners and Xbox One owners for these two big and important games, and they don't have an explanation for why. That's what I'm getting at, really.

Jim Ryan: Yeah. We've got to be mindful of our responsibility to our install base. Minecraft - the demographic playing that, you know as well as I do, it's all ages but it's also very young. We have a contract with the people who go online with us, that we look after them and they are within the PlayStation curated universe. Exposing what in many cases are children to external influences we have no ability to manage or look after, it's something we have to think about very carefully.

Eurogamer: It doesn't seem to be a problem for Nintendo, perhaps the most mindful video game company of the protection of children.

Jim Ryan: Yeah, that's true. Everybody has to take their own decisions. We'll do that. Like I say, we have no philosophical stance against cross-play at all.
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During an interview with Jeff from Giant Bomb, Phil Spencer responded to Sony's Jim Ryan, stating noting that safety was incredibly important to Xbox, and that he didn't feel Sony's discussion was "healthy for anyone".

Phil: The fact that somebody would kind of make an assertion that somehow we're not keeping Minecraft players safe, I found, not only from a Microsoft perspective but from a game industry perspective. Like, I don't know why that has to become the dialog. That doesn't seem healthy for anyone, and I feel we can always do better with everything that we do.

I feel great our relationship with Minecraft from the time we originally brought it over to 360 we've obviously owned it now for a couple years and where it's gone and I just really found the whole discussion around safety with our game and that somehow we wouldn't take that as a top priority and frankly through our parental controls on Xbox Live and everything else that we've done shown that that's incredibly important to us as a platform.

Jeff: That stuff exists and also like you know we're talking about Minecraft.

Phil: That's right, and frankly, and Nintendo.

Jeff: Oh yeah, you want to talk about people that are like maybe overly protective in spots, like there you go. They'll lock it down.

Phil: But the door is open. I'd love all Minecraft players to have the full Minecraft experience. We take the safety of Xbox Live, of the players of all of our games inside of Minecraft, obviously an incredibly important part of that and there's, it's incredibly important to our team and the work that they do around parental controls and frankly accessibility and everything and everything else, and yeah we would never put Minecraft in a place where we felt like we weren't keeping our players safe.
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Microsoft responds to Sony's reasons for blocking cross-play with Xbox Live

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Microsoft responds to Sony's reasons for blocking cross-play with Xbox Live

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