Starting with the impending Switch debut of Diablo 3, Blizzard Entertainment may be joining the ranks of developers considering cross-platform play.
Although there is no official announcement yet, Blizzard is reportedly in talks with Sony and Microsoft to enable cross-platform play across competing consoles.
“It’s a question of when, not if,” a Blizzard Entertainment representative told Business Insider Australia during a gameplay demo of Diablo 3 earlier this week.
Such a decision would make sense, considering how the Diablo 3 player-base has spread across seven consoles since the game was originally published in 2015.
Cross-platform play has been a feature many publishers and developers are implementing, with Microsoft introducing the ability for Xbox One users to interact with other players across different platforms in Minecraft last year with the ‘Better Together’ update.
However, Minecraft players weren’t able to play with PlayStation 4 users. Sony has built up the reputation for being fairly resistant to cross-platform play, most recently after players were blocked from accessing the Switch version, seemingly because their account had already been associated with the PlayStation 4 version of the game. After initially refusing to budge, Sony has finally agreed to support cross-play between consoles on the PlayStation 4, marking a major shift for the console maker.
Update: After this Business Insider Australia quote made the rounds today, a Blizzard rep told Gamasutra via email, “While we love the idea of bringing our players together across platforms, we do not have any plans to implement cross-platform gameplay for Diablo at this time.”