Cross-Platform Gaming: Every Gamer’s Favorite Feature

If you did a quick scan of this site, you’d find tons of content covering cross-platform play. Why? Because it’s one of the biggest trends impacting the gaming industry right now… but it probably should’ve happened a lot sooner. 

A decade ago, multiplayer gaming looked like firing up the latest release on your PS4 or Xbox One, only to find out that your best gaming buddies were playing it somewhere else entirely. Different consoles. Different launchers. And an entirely different ecosystem. 

Up until this decade, gaming pretty much lived inside hardware silos. And if you and your squad happened to choose the wrong platform, that multiplayer experience you were imagining quickly turned into a solo campaign. 

Now, of course, cross-platform gaming—where players on PC, console, and mobile all share the same servers—has rapidly become one of the most important features in the modern era of gaming.

The best thing of all is that it isn’t flashy, inaccessible, or limited edition. It’s becoming ever more prevalent, and it’s fundamentally changing how we both interact with games and with each other. 

Join us as we take a deep dive into why cross-platform play has become every gamer’s favorite feature. 

When Multiplayer Gaming Meant Sharing the Same Sofa?

As anyone who was gaming in the late 1990s and early 2000s will know, multiplayer gaming was once only possible with physical proximity. 

Don’t get us wrong, it was a whole lot of fun! Titles like GoldenEye 007 and Halo: Combat Evolved turned the clunky split-screen sessions of earlier classics like Sonic The Hedgehog 2 into genuinely engaging social events.

At times, there’d be four of us squeezed around a monitor, snacks within reach, and someone inevitably accusing another of screen-peeking. 

Those days of multiplayer gaming were chaotic, sure, but there was a real sense of community there. 

Then, the widespread integration of internet tech into gaming meant that online gaming expanded the playing field.

Suddenly, you could play or compete against fellow gamers in different cities, countries, and continents. 

But the industry still kept its walls intact: console networks stayed closed-chain ecosystems, mobile gaming barely intersected with other platforms, and PC gamers and console gamers remained locked in rivalry with each other.

If your bestie owned a different console or preferred a gaming rig over a plug-and-play, that was basically the end of the conversation.

The Browser as a Gaming Platform

Here’s an interesting thing, though. While it’s taken publishers like Sony and EA until this decade to cotton on to the fact that cross-platform play is essential for digital gamers, other sectors have been leading the way since the early days of mobile play. 

Back in the mid-2010s, canny iGaming operators were quick to embrace mobile as a core platform—getting there a lot sooner than Tencent et al in the process.

By delivering the same quality of gameplay across desktops and portable screens, the sector hit the double-whammy of being both appealing and accessible to tech-savvy audiences.

Nowadays, we’ve seen that sense of accessible gaming ramped up even further with the arrival of blockchain and cryptocurrencies into the sector.

Famously borderless and by its very nature decentralized, blockchain meets online casino gamers’ expectations for instant play and multi-platform functionality.

Just look at how huge Bitcoin slots have become, not just among the player community, but with software publishers and casino platforms themselves.

Their cross-border functionality makes them a perfect fit for an industry that already focuses heavily on fluidity and accessibility. 

When the Walls (Finally) Came Down?

Although it did take mainstream gaming quite a bit of time to understand that what gamers wanted was a way to play together (regardless of what hardware their friends and challengers were playing on), momentum was thankfully quick to build. 

Games like Fortnite and Rocket League demonstrated just how powerful shared ecosystems could be by enabling PC and mobile players to jump into matches with console opponents.

Seemingly overnight, player base numbers increased, downloads hit new records, and other publishers were quick to take notice. 

Certainly, the biggest driver to date in getting crossplay over the line was cloud gaming. It’s ubiquitous now, but 5 or 6 years ago, it was still in hit or miss territory—especially after the fall of Google Stadia (RIP). 

Gaming in the cloud meant players were fully empowered to choose how and when they played—kicking off an Assassin’s Creed Odyssey session on a console before picking up where they left off on their smartphones. It was obvious that we needed a similar autonomy over who we could actually play with. 

Thankfully, the industry responded! 

We Heart Cross-Platform Play 

Tech innovation is only half of the story. The real reason cross-platform gaming is thriving is because it has us, the gaming community, at its core. 

For years, we’ve expressed every emotion under the sun about being blocked from the bigger matchmaking pools and diverse communities that grow in a shared ecosystem!

And, although publishers stubbornly tried to maintain exclusivity to hold onto a perceived competitive advantage, as you can see from the libraries of cross-platform games now in existence, those walls have begun to erode. 

The next evolution could push things even further, maybe even to being entirely platform-free. Web 3.0, in conjunction with decentralization and persistent digital identities, might see us carrying assets across completely different game environments.

Imagine playing 8-deck blackjack in the metaverse with a Fortnite skin! Stranger things have happened…