Recently, many online games with cross-play support began to appear, as more and more people want to play online regardless of where they are and the device they are using. This movement in the world of games was probably driven by the growing trend of everything communicating through the cloud with its numerous servers, which increasingly demand less processing from the machines we use. Added to this, we have driving factors such as, for example, streaming that increasingly transmits diverse content to users.
What is the cross-play proposal?
Cross-play (or crossplay) consists of playing an online game whether on console, smartphone or PC, together with other players who are on a different platform than you are. A proposal similar to this is the cross-save, which allows the user to save a certain game on one platform and continue where they left off on another.
There is also the denomination cross-console where there is the same meaning as cross-play, but with the interaction limited only to consoles. The reason for this is the issue of differences in the way the game is controlled, because when using a mouse and a keyboard, in most cases, the player will have advantages in the commands by a good margin, thus making cross matches -play unfair. Because of this, although the Call of Duty Modern Warfare game allows crossplay between consoles and PCs, there is a function to disable the functionality and also to filter only people who use a controller or only people who use a mouse and keyboard.
Sony recently released the use of cross-play for game developers on its Playstation console, further increasing the possibilities of games with technology support. Check here the list of games that allow players to use the function.
How does crossplay work?
With the growth of online multiplayer games, there was the development of games that allow two or more users to play simultaneously on different computer systems (Mac, Linux, Windows). Today, technology has evolved more and most online games are already developed thinking about use on multiple platforms. This is done using standard TCP/IP functions, which allow communication between players' clients or between a client and a game server, thus eliminating hardware differences between platforms.
Is the future cross-play?
I believe that more and more cross-play will be implemented in games. This is due to the increased use of cross-save and game streaming, which will soon increase considerably with the debut of Microsoft's Project xCloud on Xbox, the launch of Google's console, Stadia and the Playstation 5 that will be released on next year.
As users access their games via streaming, through the most varied devices, it is very likely that they want to play with each other, regardless of the platform their friend is on, in addition to being interesting to continue the progress of a certain game regardless of the device they are using. are using.
An interesting fact is that nowadays it is not necessary to develop a game from scratch in order for it to support cross-play, as it is possible to make it use the functionality through a simple update via the internet.
