Bethesda's VP of global marketing and communications Pete Hines has given an interesting interview on QuakeCon 2018, where he revealed that cross-play for their card trading game The Elder Scrolls Legends is a non-negotiable term.
Hines insists that The Elder Scrolls Legends cross-play is essential, both in terms of cross-platform play and cross-platform progress. Of course, Bethesda's head honchos weren't born yesterday, so they didn't explicitly mention Sony, but did they really need to?
What they did mention however is that Bethesda will not take no for an answer. Seeing as how the game already runs on PC, Mac, iOS and Android, it would be foolish even to consider launching it on closed off systems. PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch versions of The Elder Scrolls Legends are expected by the end of 2018 so I'll let you pick out the culprit here.
Bethesda "cannot have a game that works one way across everywhere else except for on this one thing", Hines said. Considering the sort of hardware limitations, or lack thereof, for implementing cross-play in a card trading game, it shouldn't be much of a hassle. That's of course unless Sony steps in.
Asked whether there is a possibility that we won't be seeing The Elder Scrolls Legends on PlayStation 4 consoles at all, Hines again steered clear of giving any definitive statements, again quite understandably. He stressed however that even though they continue to talk to all their platform partners, these terms are "non-negotiable".
You may recall Sony causing a ruckus recently over Fortnite: Battle Royale, a game that now runs on every major platform yet on Sony's console. The company did say they're but we all know what that means - they'll just their thing until everyone stops talking about it.
Bethesda
While I'd love to say that Bethesda's insistence will change something, I sincerely doubt it will. After all, if Epic couldn't do it with all their Fortnite cash laying around, it's unlikely that a card trading game will force Sony to change their ways.
The Elder Scrolls Legends, Bethesda's card trading game
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