The two console manufacturers participating together in an advertisement with cross-play wasn’t a one-time marketing effort by them.

Nintendo‘s 78th, annually held general shareholder meeting had some comments from both Tatsumi Kimishima, the CEO of Nintendo, and Susumu Tanaka, a senior executive officer. „I will have to refrain from commenting directly about (crossplay in) Fortnite and Minecraft because those are not Nintendo titles, but I will say that our fundamental way of thinking about offering Nintendo titles on other platforms remains unchanged,” Kimishima said about cross-play. „Cross-play comes about from conversations between publishers and platform holders. We are inclined to do what we can to help publishers incorporate crossplay when that is what they want,” Tanaka added. They are both offering help for the publishers for the cross-play.

Microsoft is also widely supporting it – this time, Mike Ybarra, the corporate vice president of gaming at the Redmond-based company, said the following on Twitter: „I want cross progression on all games. I play on PC and Xbox so much, wish all games supported this. The people I play with do the same, so we constantly debate to play new games together on PC or Xbox – shouldn’t need to be a discussion. Let’s make it happen!” Cross-progression is where you can play on one platform and continue your progress on another, or vice versa. Overwatch and Rocket League don’t offer this at the moment.

Fortnite already openly allows cross-progression between PC, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch with just one Epic Games account, but Sony blocks it (forcing the Switch users to make a new account if they ever played on PlayStation 4…). Cross-play is going to be an unavoidable object shortly. Perhaps it is why Sony is pushing single-player AAA development.

Source: WCCFTech, WCCFTech

I really want cross progression on all games. I play on PC and Xbox so much, wish all games supported this. The people I play with do the same so we constantly debate to play new games together on PC or Xbox – just shouldn’t need to be a discussion. Let’s make it happen!

— Mike Ybarra (@XboxQwik) July 10, 2018