Players looking to trudge through the swamps of Louisiana with a few more players shooting at them had a big win in their favor earlier this week. Crytek has officially added cross-platform play to their survival/battle royale title Hunt: Showdown.
The new cross-platform play brings players across the title’s console platforms together, allowing them all to play on a single server rather than separating them by the platform they’re running the title on.
By doing so, players are going to be experiencing a wide variety of benefits. First and foremost, queues for matches will be considerably faster, as there will be players to fill up a game quicker rather than waiting to find enough players to fill out a world.
Of course, more than anything, it’s going to make the swamp more lively – for better and for worse. Players are going to have enough opponents in the game to give them a run for their money when it comes to claiming a bounty.
The crossplay is being brought to consoles, however, which isn’t going to be affecting the PC version of the title at all via Steam. Xbox and PlayStation players will be able to play with each other cross console.
This is a preferred way to have it for most players, as there’s generally a perceived difference in quality and playability in titles like this between mouse+keyboard and controller controls. Many believe this turns into a question of balancing due to the medium.
Primarily, mouse and keyboard offers a swifter, more reliable and responsive control set than a controller does, which puts PC players at a drastic advantage over console players. While it may seem like a minor difference on the surface, the improved accuracy of a mouse over a stick is an incredibly notable advantage.
Additionally, Hunt: Showdown is a title that features permadeath for hunters. What could possibly be more frustrating than losing your favorite hunter off of a difference between the controls that were being used in a cross-platform situation?
However, this discrepancy doesn’t take place between consoles, as both use controllers. PC players aren’t bemoaning this fact either, as the title already has plenty of players in the Steam version, which means that crossplay wouldn’t have had a considerable positive impact.
While there’s still some argument to be made for balancing between console and PC, there’s a possibility that we could see the title move to such a cross-platform situation there as well. Some titles, such as Rocket League, already feature the console-PC cross-play. However, given the negative response much of the community has, it’s unlikely to appear any time soon.