Cross-Play Games could soon become more widespread

“Cross-play enables larger games, bigger audiences, and growth for the global games industry.”

Epic Games is taking things a step further and releasing their cross-play overlay for Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch. Epic Games was one of the first firms to advocate for cross-play between consoles. Although this doesn’t necessarily imply that a ton of new games will overnight feature cross-play, Epic is giving creators the resources they need to make it happen more quickly. That might indicate that cross-play spreads much more in the future.

In June 2022, Epic’s cross-play overlay for PC officially debuted. This made it possible for both game creators and gamers to link their communities and games on Epic and Steam.

Cross-play promotes larger games, larger audiences, and expansion of the global gaming market. Epic Online Services now makes it possible to connect more players with a single overlay thanks to the addition of support for the main console platforms, according to Epic.

The service, which is now supported on the Epic Games Store, Steam, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation, is officially known as the Epic Online Service cross-play overlay. According to Epic, 750 million or more Epic Games accounts can now interact and play with one another.

Anyone who has ever created a cross-play game is aware that several factors go into making it feel seamless, according to Epic. Any game can enable players to sign in to their Epic Games account on all platforms and simply communicate with their friends thanks to the cross-play overlay.

Players will see one friends list that incorporates lists from many platforms when using the cross-play overlay, which should make it simpler to see who is available and invite people to sessions. Now, regardless of the platform they use, anyone can send game invites from within a game.

As a result of the Epic Online Services cross-play overlay using each platform’s native trust, safety, and privacy requirements, Epic further claimed that the social experience is “secure” on any platform. In addition, Epic’s own controls are active.
Cross-play support is a free feature offered to developers by Epic Online Services.

Hundreds of games currently employ Epic Online Services, which have been successfully tested in battle. We are committed to gaining and maintaining the trust of everyone who uses it, and it supports game development using any engine, can be used on any store, and can be delivered on any platform,” Epic stated.
Cross-play between PS4 and Xbox One in Fortnite was accidently enabled in 2017 by Epic Games. This was quickly fixed, but it showed that platform holders’ politics were at play rather than a technical problem when it came to cross-play between competing platforms. Today, massive brands like Call of Duty, Battlefield, and others offer cross-play on a global scale.
Cross-play is not a given in every game, though. As an illustration, the sequel to Remnant was just released and does not yet enable cross-play.

Get started today

Get started with three simple steps at dev.epicgames.com/sdk:

1. Download Epic Online Services SDK 1.16
2. Log in and configure it in the developer portal at dev.epicgames.com/portal
3. Check out the documentation at dev.epicgames.com/docs