Well everybody, it’s finally happened! If you follow me at all, you know I absolutely love my Minecraft. Don’t believe me? Check out my full review of the Minecraft: Switch edition here. The Minecraft Bedrock Edition Update dropped for Switch! It actually dropped sometime between 10pm MDT (6-20-2018) and 1am MDT (6-21-2018). I can’t recall the time exactly, because I was playing another game at the time. But it dropped! I downloaded it, booted it up, and converted my old survival world to the new game. After that I went to bed. I woke up Thursday morning to this trailer.
Holy cow! The shade being thrown is palpable. I’ve been a fan of video games for a long time now (coming up on 35 years) and not since the days of the Console Wars has shade been thrown this way. Back in those days of Sonic throwing shade at Mario, or Crash Bandicoot throwing shade at Master Cheif was this a regular thing. So what’s the big deal?
At E3 2017 it was announced that a new update to Minecraft would be hitting iOS, Android, Windows 10, Xbox One, and Switch consoles in the latter part of 2017. In this trailer they showed a smart phone, an Xbox One, and then to everybody’s amazement, they showed a Nintendo Switch. All built using Minecraft’s signature blocky goodness. What this meant, is that Minecraft was getting cross platform play between all those systems. But where was Sony? The fans asked, and Microsoft answered. And it was not a good answer.Sony said they would not allow their console to connected with the Better Together Update. Fans were not happy, but, it’s only Minecraft.
The next day, Rocket League was announced for Nintendo Switch. And guess what Rocket League is capable of? That’s right! Cross platform play. For everyone except Sony. Psyonix commented on the matter, stating that not only was it possible, Sony was actively blocking it. Psyonix has the code written for it, and it waiting for Sony to allow them to flip the switch on Cross Platform play with the other consoles. After this, the uproar eventually died down, as people accepted the fact that Sony was just going to be stuck in their ways.
Fast forward to E3 2018, which was just a couple weeks ago. One of the worst kept secrets of 2018 was announced. Fortnite came to Switch on that Tuesday, immediately following the Nintendo E3 Direct. And guess what? Not only was cross platform play enabled and working, if you were playing on another console, you could sign into your Epic account and bring all your gear and progression over to your brand new, shiny, Switch edition of the game. So people downloaded the game, and then the rage started to pour through the internet once more. Players who had played on PS4 were greeted with the following message.
That’s right! Sony is actively blocking blocking cross platform play and cross platform progression with not only Switch Players, but Xbox One. But what was worse was how they went about it. They allegedly have a line in the Playstation version of the terms of service that says if you tie your Epic account to any system in the Playstation ecosystem, it can never be signed into any other console. This includes Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. So then people got the idea to disconnect their accounts from their Playstation account. That failed. This Login Failed screen was Epic’s way of calling out Sony directly. Don’t believe me? Check out the Playstation logo. It’s way too close to be a coincidence, in my humble opinion. Epic has also stated publicly that there is nothing they can do on their end to stop this madness. Sony is the only one that can right this wrong.
So now that you know the history, go back and watch that trailer from the beginning of this article. Sony has made statements, claiming they would be losing money if they allowed cross platform progression. There are ways that they could secure their market. I discuss my disgust with Sony here on Infendo Radio 446. What do you think about all this? Do you think Sony is right to be blocking this? Is it okay that they are legally getting away with it because of the fact it is in some fine print in their terms of service that no one reads? Comment down below and let’s have a discussion.
Stay tuned to Infendo. Once I have a chance to dive into the Bedrock Edition of Minecraft, I’ll be posting a mini-review of the update.
