Cross-Play Is Essential For Elder Scrolls Legends, Which Puts PS4 Edition In Doubt

Bethesda's Pete Hines says the company doesn't want to segment the audience.
The PlayStation 4 version of The Elder Scrolls Legends is in question due to Sony's stance on cross-play. Bethesda's Pete Hines told Eurogamer that cross-play and cross-progression support is essential for Legends, and with Sony not allowing cross-play, that presents a problem.

"We continue to make our case for 'this is how it needs to work' and 'this is how it needs to function,'" he said. "But we are moving ahead with the assumption that any platform we release it on must support cross-progression and cross-play. I am aware of the conflict that arises given that statement but we are continuing to work on it."

Hines went on to say that Bethesda is in communication with Sony--and all the other platform-holders--about cross-play. "We need everybody to be on board and understand--Nintendo, Microsoft--this is how we're proceeding. I don't want anybody to think I'm trying to single Sony out because I'm not," he said. "These conversations we have, we have with everybody, including Apple and Google."

Asked directly if Bethesda wouldn't release Legends on PS4 if Sony doesn't change its stance, Hines said it's not that simple.

"I imagine the answer is fairly dire but I don't want to jump to conclusions yet because there's a lot of space between 'yes' and 'no,'" Hines said. "What if they so 'no' to this but 'yes' to this?" It could present an unforeseen and workable solution.

"Whatever they say, we will continue to have a conversation with any platform directly. I don't want to play this out in the court of public opinion. We respect Sony, we respect Microsoft, we respect Nintendo. If I or my company has an issue, we will bring it up with them directly; we know who to call, we know who to email - we'll talk to them and see if we can figure it out."

Elsewhere in the interview, Hines talked about how cross-play is critical for Legends, which is a digital strategy card game. "If we have to start segmenting our audience to say 'folks on this platform can only play folks on that platform', or 'any progress you make on that platform can't be there', then man, that's a bad situation," he said.

Legends is currently in development for PS4, Xbox One, and Switch, and is penciled in to be released on those systems this year.

PlayStation executive Shawn Layden has said that Sony believes it will be able to find a "solution" to the cross-play situation that is "understood and accepted by our gaming community, while at the same time supporting our business." Nothing has come of this yet, however. For lots more on the cross-play situation, check out GameSpot's video feature in the embed above.