PS4 And Xbox One Cross-Play Was Live In Fortnite, But Has Since Been "Corrected"

From a technical standpoint, the ability for PS4 and Xbox One owners to play online together in games like Rocket League is more than possible, but to date, Sony has not given its consent to allow it to happen. Despite that, Fortnite reportedly enabled cross-platform play between the two consoles over the weekend, although that has now been turned off and chalked up to an error.

A number of posts on Reddit have emerged over the past few days with accounts of cross-play working. This was seemingly first discovered by user PRE_-CISION-_, who noticed that, while playing on PS4, they were in a game alongside someone using a space in their username. Spaces are disallowed in PSN usernames, suggesting a player on Xbox One. Some speculated that it was merely a PC player (Fortnite supports cross-play between PS4 and PC), but a further investigation by Reddit and NeoGAF users reveals that the account name does not exist in the Epic Launcher used by Fortnite on PC. However, it is the name of an Xbox Live user who has recently played Fortnite. Additional evidence of PS4 and Xbox One cross-play was later shared, including one person who claimed to be playing with their child across the two consoles.

Developer Epic Games has seemingly confirmed this was true. Unfortunately, it was not a deliberate addition to the game. When reached for comment, Epic told GameSpot, "We had a configuration issue and it has now been corrected."

It's disappointing news to learn this isn't functionality that had simply gone live without a proper announcement. Microsoft has famously been open to cross-play support in recent years. Rocket League is set to work across Xbox One, Switch, and PC, while the developer of Minecraft (which Microsoft owns) is also open to cross-play between Xbox One and PS4. For its part, Sony has not seemed eager to allow cross-play.