PS4 Will Support Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare Cross-Play

Have the console walls finally fallen down? When Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was announced, news broke that the game would support cross-platform multiplayer, but there was no word as to whether or not Sony's PlayStation 4 was on board.

Good news, everyone: it is.

Forbes' Paul Tassi reports that the PlayStation 4 will, indeed, support Modern Warfare's cross-play features, giving players on PC, PS4, and Xbox One a chance to play with one another for the first time in a Call of Duty title. In the interest of fairness, those who play using a controller will be matched up with one another more often than not, keeping keyboard and mouse players separated into their own pool. If you happen to be a PC player who uses a controller, however, you'll have a chance to team up with or go to war against your console brethren on both PS4 and Xbox One. And that's huge.

But the bigger news here is that Sony allowed Call of Duty to do PS4 cross-play without any hassle.

When it comes to the PlayStation 4, Sony has a long, well-documented history of shutting down cross-play and cross-progression efforts. The company eventually relented when it came to games like Fortnite and Rocket League. But the folks at Hi-Rez Studios were complaining as recently as February that Sony was giving them the run-around. If Sony is finally letting all developers implement cross-play features, no questions asked, that is a major shift in the company's philosophy and — to be honest — a welcome one.

It also bodes well for other games that have wanted to do cross-play and cross-progression on PS4 but haven't been able to. Hi-Rez (the studio behind Smite and Realm Royale) is one such company. And Bungie is another. We covered a story back in April about how Bungie had apparently wanted to support Destiny 2 character transfers between PS4 and PC, but got shut down by Sony. Now that Sony is letting Call of Duty run wild, perhaps Bungie can go back and look at giving that another shot.

We're happy to see Sony's PS4 playing ball when it comes to cross-platform features in games. They're good for developers, who can tap into larger player bases. And they're good for players, who can finally unite with their friends regardless of the box they own. We hope to see more of this soon.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is scheduled to release on Oct. 25 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.