Cross platform gaming

[Gnom]

I couldn't find anything about this, so I'll try asking it myself.

Since this game (which looks as awesome as the first one, by the way) is released both on PC and PS4, are players from both platforms going to be able to play with each other ?

That would be awesome, as I have many friends playing on PS4 to whom I could introduce such a brilliant game that is Magicka.

[Trapfly]

Unfortunately, you won't be able to play on a PC with PS4 players. The devs confirmed that you can't. :(

[Gnom]

Aww :( That's too bad. I don't think there would be such a gap as there would be for FPS games, so I assume there is another reason preventing them from doing that.

Do you have some source on this topic that I can read ?

[Trapfly]

Originally posted by Gnom:

Do you have some source on this topic that I can read ?

Yeah. It's pretty briefly mentioned here, but not really anywhere else: Forum Thread[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

BjornB simply says that it's not possible, but he doesn't really elaborate at all.

[Pizlenut]

Originally posted by MTTC Trapfly:

BjornB simply says that it's not possible, but he doesn't really elaborate at all.

because its "not possible" for non-technical reasons, or they would name one. None exist that wouldn't get torn apart as being ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ because there is absolutely no reason the two computer devices, using networks, couldnt talk to each other, especially when you consider the PS4 uses the exact same network (and protocols) your PC would use to communicate in the first place.

There is no reason the two devices couldn't connect to each other, no reason except the "because Sony said so", which nobody would want to elaborate on without throwing the blame at Sony, which would probably piss them off... which is a bad idea if you want to release on their system.

OR the two softwares are not identical in features.

its your ball, but their court.

[OnionKnight]

Sony is strongly against things like these, you can't have DLC or achievements cross-platform either. Even if you could Steam and PSN lobbies are completely different, if you don't use them you would miss out on a lot of features like invites. If you do then when making your own lobby system you'd have to make sure that the host of each server synchronize the data for their respective platform which might not be completely possible for things such as showing accurate information about the players in a lobby.
No matter have you go about it the results would be wonky.

[Gnom]

@OnionKnight, I like your answer. I guess having an ingame friends system could solve some problems, but that would just be throwing an unnecessary layer over existing ones. So I understand your point.

@Pizlenut, I agree that there is no technical limitation in theory, but as OnionKnight pointed out, the fact that PSN and Steam have their own different systems (and probably incompatible as is) makes it really tough for a game developper to overcome the difficulties. I think that this kind of feature would require Valve and Sony themselves to work together on a interconnectivity API between their systems.