Microsoft made history earlier this week when it announced plans to allow Xbox gamers to play against PS4 and PC players. However, those plans had one small caveat: while the platform would now allow developers to determine whether their future games would support cross-network play, Sony would need to support the move on its PlayStation Network.
All eyes turned to Sony after learning about that small facet, and in a statement, the firm gave an encouraging, yet vague, response to Microsoft's cross-platform play invitation.
"PlayStation has been supporting cross-platform play between PC on several software titles starting with Final Fantasy 11 on PS2 and PC back in 2002," said Sony in a statement. "We would be happy to have the conversation with any publishers or developers who are interested in cross platform play."
As you can see, the response suggests that Sony is open-minded about cross-console play but noticeably stopped short of discussing a deal with Microsoft - in fact, Sony doesn't explicitly mention Xbox or Microsoft at all.
So where does that leave the potential connection of Xbox Live and PlayStation Network? Nowhere, really. Granted, any response short of shutting down the proposition outright is encouraging. It's important to note that from a pure business perspective, Sony doesn't have much to gain from a partnership of any kind. So for the time being, even Sony's apparent willingness to listen to developers interested in cross-network play should be seen as good news.
In a similar vein, it's unclear how many developers will jump on board with Microsoft's cross-network play initiative. Psyonix already announced in a blog post that it plans to expand "Rocket League's" functionality so that Xbox players can connect with PC - a function that had been absent at launch and one PlayStation owners had already been privy to.
"Cross-network play has been the number-one most requested feature our community has asked for since Rocket League was first announced on Xbox One, and now that we are able to pursue complete online unity on all platforms, today's announcement is a dream come true," Psyonix said at the time.
As Sony notes, it's been supporting cross-platform play between the PlayStation and PC for more than a decade now, so while cross-network play itself wouldn't be anything new, having that link be between Xbox and PlayStation would be groundbreaking.
So when can we expect to hear more news? GDC 2016 might be a good place to start. Sony already made waves when it announced an official release date and price for its PlayStation VR, so its not entirely out of reason to expect the firm to make further comments about the subject. However, the most likely time we could expect news would be at E3 in June. Not only is that time when most console related news is revealed, but that would also be the time for game developers to declare which games they intend to feature cross-platform support.
All eyes will be on Sony until then.
