Epic Titles announced on Wednesday that it will expand its crossplay tools to support major consoles, making it easier for game creators to incorporate cross-platform play into their titles. Epic Games’ free software development kit, Epic Online Services, includes the tools.
Given the huge popularity of Fortnite, a cross-platform multiplayer game, it’s no surprise that Epic Games is a big fan of crossplay.
Typically, producers must port their games across many platforms and digital shops, and gamers using separate devices or purchasing the game from different PC retailers are unable to play together.
Epic’s new tools aim to address this by enabling creators to connect more players and include cross-platform elements into their games. In 2022, the firm initially introduced its crossplay facilities, which were limited to PC and let users connect across the Epic Games Store and Steam.
Epic Games has now expanded these capabilities to include PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch support, as disclosed in a blog post on Wednesday. The Epic Online Services overlay will be consistent across PC and console platforms, allowing players to see all of their friends in one location, create a new Epic Games account that is tied to their native platform account, send and receive game invites, and play across platforms. Like Epic Online Services’ other toolkits, the crossplay game services are designed to work with any game engine and any store or platform.
This overlay should make it much easier to incorporate crossplay multiplayer functionality into games, allowing friends who own games from different consoles or PC retailers to play together. With over 750 million Epic titles accounts and hundreds of titles leveraging Epic Online Services, a large number of gamers will soon be able to play together. Crossplay is one of many solutions provided by Epic Online Services, which allows game developers to use a single back-end service provider, substantially simplifying the production process.
This will undoubtedly be an exciting update; extended cross-play means that more players will soon be able to join multiplayer games with their friends regardless of platform, allowing for greater connectivity within the gaming community.
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