Nintendo is going above and beyond the call of duty (pun unintended) in helping indie devs, as they have confirmed cross play for games published on their systems with versions on competing platforms. More than that, they promise to help broker deals for more cross platform play games in the future.
To take it way back, people started talking about cross platform play back when Dreamcast was still in the market, during the early 2000s. Although still in its early stages, online play was already a thing for games that were on competing platforms like Dreamcast, Windows, and Playstation, and fans were clamoring for it early on, particularly on Quake 3 Arena. Of course, that never came to be, and as gaming companies developed their online services, the clamor for such died down, not only as it was deemed an impossibility, but as platform exclusivity became equivalent to online play, particularly on Xbox Live.
A Nintendo representative has confirmed that they are giving the go ahead for Cubemen 2 from Three Sprockets, Pure Chess from Ripstone, and Disney Infinity to provide cross play across platforms other than Nintendo’s. Pure Chess in particular has already been published on PS3, so it is up to Sony’s end if they are willing to have PS3 players connect with Wii U players. Disney Interactive would no doubt love for gamers on any platform to connect to everyone else as well. Of course, even Disney is small pickings compared to the likes of Call of Duty Ghosts, which is coming to current gen consoles at the same time on November 14.
This also goes beyond the speculated cross platform play Microsoft is hinting at between Windows 8 and Xbox One. Conventional wisdom says console companies would not want to work together, but who says that’s really the case? If not fans, perhaps third parties with klout, such as Activision, can compel them to do so.
