Yeah I don’t see why you couldn’t link a Nintendo and Xbox account to your Epic account along with Sony. It doesn’t mean there’s multiplay, but it means all your stats accrue to the same account, owned by Epic.
But realistically this impacts a vanishingly small number of people. We’re over-indexed here, but the number of households with multiple consoles is very small.
I think the number of gamers with a Switch and a PS4 (and PC) is pretty obviously large enough and vocal enough that this is now a massive issue for Sony. Fortnite is the biggest game going atm so this will hit mainstream news.
Yes, I imagine that percentage is near 100% for journalists and only slightly lower for people who follow gaming news extremely closely.
Just to put this in perspective, Nintendo has sold around 5 million Switch consoles worldwide.
Sony’s PS4 installed base is reportedly around 60 million.
Even if we pretend that all 5 million Switch consoles sold to households that already own a PS4, that’s 8% crossover. Then we have to know how many of that 8% play Fortnite.
But we know that this is wildly optimistic, so my guess this is a <1% problem that is way overindexed by the people who write about the industry.
Still a dumb policy by Sony, but this is not the end of the world.
From your link:
As of March 2018 (1 year since release), the sales figures are at 17.79 million worldwide per wikipedia.
Ugh, failure in my reading comprehension. Thanks for the correction.
Free pass for any post before noon is my policy! ;)
I have a feeling that Epic didn’t set it up that way (or in a way Sony is OK with) and Sony told them to change it, and they said… No.
The weird thing is that if your account is locked out of the Switch, you can’t even unlock it, even if you unlink the Sony account from your Epic account. That makes me wonder if it’s not some bizarre contractual thing between Epic and Sony.
It is all speculation at this point, Sony hasn’t really publicly commented. Nor has Epic outside of “Sony requires this of us”
I do wonder if there was some Sony deal that required Epic to do things. When fortnite came to consoles there was quite a big storefront presence.
Given Sony’s history, I am definitely going to give Epic the benefit of the doubt on this one.
I’m definitely not blaming Epic until there is some evidence of that. Tim Sweeney doesn’t strike me as a guy who likes having to lock his games to a particular piece of hardware in any specific way.
I’m pissed.
This is my first attempt at embedding a tweet. Not sure if it works this way.
Thats quality trolling here.
😂🤣😂🤣
😡😡😡😡
It makes sense to have Sony carry the brunt of this bad decision, since it is their decision.
Sony is fucking this up real good. Friend informed me an Epic account can be PC + mobile + Xbox + Switch but once it’s touched PSN it can’t be linked.
Yeah, if you touch your account to Sony’s box even one time, it’s locked to their console forever. The others are forfeit.
It’s fucking stupid.
Well, the initial to-be-expected non-response has arrived.
We’re always open to hearing what the PlayStation community is interested in to enhance their gaming experience. With… more than 80 million monthly active users on PlayStation Network, we’ve built a huge community of gamers who can play together on Fortnite and all online titles.
We also offer Fortnite cross-play support with PC, Mac, iOS, and Android devices, expanding the opportunity for Fortnite fans on PS4 to play with even more gamers on other platforms.
We have nothing further to add beyond this at this point.
No. 3 story on the BBC News site.
Make me happy that this have exploded. I don’t own a Switch, but I wish this type of strategies go away.
Seems like Sony could compromise pretty easily on allowing accounts to cross over, but that’s it.