Although plenty of time has been spent on new game and hardware announcements at E3 2017, something of a storm has started between the major players of the industry with regards to cross play. After starting over the confirmation that Minecraft PS4 would not be included in the Minecraft cross-platform play partnership, Sony then stated that its reasons to steering clear of such agreements came down to safety concerns for PS4 users. Xbox head Phil Spencer has now spoken up on the issue.

Talking as part of a Giant Bomb live stream, Phil Spencer talked about how the cross-platform multiplayer agreement was a "win-win partnership" for all parties. Subsequently, the comments from Sony were brought up, to which Spencer replied that he did not think it seemed "healthy" for anyone involved.

"The fact that somebody would make an assertion that somehow we’re not keeping Minecraft players safe I found – not only from a Microsoft perspective, but from a game industry perspective – I don’t know why that has to become the dialogue," explained Spencer.

In short, Spencer feels as though the deals in place for Minecraft cross-platform play are perfectly stable. "We can always do better with everything we do, but I feel great about our relationship with Minecraft," stated Spencer. "We would never put Minecraft in a place where we felt like we weren’t keeping our players safe. Frankly, through the parental controls on Xbox Live and everything we’ve done, we’ve shown that [safety] is very important to us as a platform."

It's not just Minecraft that has caused the issue of cross-platform play to come to a head, either. Rocket League has had similar issues, with the game coming to Switch and offering up cross play with Xbox and PC owners. Once again, PS4 is not part of cross-platform multiplayer, and again it is tied to Sony's refusal rather than some kind of technical issue. Indeed, developer Psyonix has even stated that there is a "political barrier" to the game getting full cross play.

Given the comments of all involved, unfortunately it does not look as if a resolution to this issue will be coming any time soon. Hopefully, however, users across all platforms will be able to pick up and play with all other players at some point in the future.

Source: Giant Bomb