The beta for Counter Strike: Global Offensive has been going strong over the last few months, but the first major change has been announced. The originally planned cross-play has been scrapped. Initially it was planned to allow Mac and PC players to compete against PS3 players. This would have been nice but the data that Valve has collected from the beta shows that it just doesn’t work out very well.
“The beta has proved we want to update not just the beta, but the game itself post-launch frequently on the PC,” Valve’s Chet Faliszek said in an interview with Joystiq. “To do that we need to separate the platforms so one doesn’t hamstring the other. So for that, we have removed the idea of cross-platform play — essentially make all platforms stronger by not mixing them.”
You can still sign up for the beta, by the way. I’m not a big Counter Strike player but this move makes sense. Mac and PC players have different tools to play the game with and those tools allow them to react much faster. With a console controller you have analog sticks that just can’t compete with a mouse in speed and sensitivity; so a move to cut out cross-play is probably a good thing in the long run.