Overwatch Crossplay Between Consoles Being Discussed Says Jeff Kaplan

By Ford James ·

Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan has revealed that Blizzard are discussing the possibility of console crossplay with Microsoft and Sony.

Overwatch Crossplay Between Consoles Being Discussed Says Jeff Kaplan

A few months ago, Epic Games announced that Fortnite would be receiving crossplay between every platform. Whether you’re on PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, or smartphone, you can play Fortnite with anyone you want. It’s a huge change that has proven immensely successful, allowing players to enjoy the game in different ways. Rocket League is another game that has implemented crossplay, but we haven’t seen it with many other popular titles yet.

While speaking to Eurogamer during BlizzCon 2018, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan explained that Blizzard is “constantly in discussions with the first-parties, Microsoft and Sony, to see where they're at and gauge where their temperature is at. It's something that would be very exciting for us to pursue.”

Fortnite received crossplay across all platforms earlier this year. Image courtesy of Epic Games.

When asked if they are pursuing it, he said that they’re “definitely having conversations that we’re interested in the thought of it. It's very complicated - from a technology standpoint, a game design standpoint, and from a business relationship standpoint. But we would be excited to tackle all of those challenges; we would love to try. We're gamers; "Why can't my buddies on this system or that system play together?" We sympathise with that, we want to be able to do that too.”

In a move that will no doubt excite the Nintendo Switch owners out there, Kaplan went on to say that they’re “very open-minded” about putting Overwatch on the Switch. “Our philosophy has always been we want as many players playing Overwatch as possible, and we want to reach as many possible Overwatch players as are out there. We will always explore a platform if we think we could make it viable - both the technology and the business relationship. We would love to do it.” Disappointingly, he finished that thought by saying that they don’t have anything to announce at this time though.

Of course, it’s not the only Overwatch news from BlizzCon. Kaplan has also confirmed that Echo is not Overwatch Hero 30, while he also spoke about the possibility of Overwatch Story Mode.

(Header image courtesy of The Verge.)