Cross-platform play

In video games, cross-platform play or cross-play is a term used to describe the ability of a video game with an online gaming component that allows players using different video game hardware to play with each other simultaneously. It is commonly applied to the ability for players using a game on a specific video game console to play alongside a player on a different hardware platform such as another console or a computer.

The term is related to but distinct from the notion of cross-platform development, which use software languages and tools to enable deployment of software on multiple platforms. Cross-platform play is also a distinct concept from the ability to allow a player to play a game on different hardware platforms, often only having to purchase the title for one single system to have access to it on other systems, and retaining their progress in the game through the use of cloud storage or similar techniques.

Video games are frequently developed as cross-platform software products, using standard software libraries, game engines, and scripting languages that isolate platform-specific details from the specific elements for the game itself. Such tools enable games to be released simultaneously for many platforms.

With the availability of the Internet, games have included online multiplayer components, allowing two or more users to play simultaneously on different computer systems. Games released for a platform may be able to take advantage of platform-specific networking libraries to accomplish this, such as the Winsock layer for Microsoft Windows. These games would not be able to be played cross-platform with other versions released on other systems. Instead, most games with online components and developed for multiple platforms generally use standard functions for communication between players' clients, or between a client and a game server, nullifying the intrinsic differences between hardware platforms.

There are some practical limitations for cross-platform play. In games where the player's computer or console acts as the server, the hardware capabilities may place limits on the number of players that that server can host, and thus preventing cross-platform play. Hardware also plays an issue in considering how much the player can customize the game on a computer to run at a high framerate, while console versions are fixed to run at the optimal experience on the set hardware configuration. The different types of inputs between computer and consoles also can create certain advantages for players on specific types of hardware, commonly when comparing keyboard and mouse controls on personal computers to that of analog controllers for consoles in games requiring precision aiming like first person shooters. In 2010, Rahul Sood, the president of Voodoo PC, stated that Microsoft had terminated cross-platform play between Xbox 360 and PC players for an upcoming game claiming that even skilled console players "got destroyed every time" in matches against PC players of mediocre skill due to the difference between controller and keyboard-and-mouse controls, and thus would be seen as an embarrassment to the Xbox 360. Microsoft's Senior Director of PC and Mobile Gaming Kevin Unangst countered this point, stating that Microsoft's internal testing found that much of the issues related to control scheme difference can be mitigated through a game's design and balance.Blizzard Entertainment is seeking to implement cross-platform play between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of its game Overwatch, but will not also include the Windows platform specifically due to the advantage keyboard-mouse players have over controllers, which greatly affects performance in the fast-paced game.

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