For what seemed like the longest time, Sony refused to join other companies in allowing Minecraft cross-play on its platform. Their lack of cooperation stuck out like a sore thumb when Microsoft and Nintendo teamed up last year, releasing Minecraft Bedrock – the cross-play version of the popular game – on the Nintendo Switch.
Sony remained the sole hold-out for a long time, which certainly didn’t please fans who were looking to enjoy a big, shared world with all of their Minecraft friends. Someone at Sony finally saw the light, apparently, because they’re going all-in on Minecraft cross-play as announced with a charming new trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJKoASmD_mo
Sony joins Xbox One, Switch, Windows 10, and even mobile platforms, meaning that for the first time ever, anyone playing Minecraft Bedrock on any platform can play with anyone else on any other platform. The Nintendo Switch joined the party in June of 2018, so Sony fans have been waiting a year and a half for this announcement.
According to Microsoft, who now owns Minecraft thanks to their acquisition of Mojang some time ago, they’ve been in talks with Sony for a while now. According to the company, the talks with Sony were about pinning down the right time to debut Minecraft Bedrock on Playstation 4, but one has to assume that a large portion of those talks was about bringing Sony to the table in the first place. Unless, of course, Sony started to worry that their bummer attitude was driving players to other platforms and were eager to jump on the bandwagon before it was too late.
Something that could have played a factor in Sony’s reluctance to join the party is the fact that, because Microsoft owns Minecraft, even Playstation 4 players have to have a Microsoft account to play the Bedrock version. Players won’t need a paid Xbox Live Gold account to play (thankfully, could you imagine?), but their free Microsoft account will let them keep track of all their progress and purchases.
Sony probably isn’t wild about having their player base sign up for Microsoft accounts through their very console, and who could blame them?
The new, updated Minecraft is ready to go and will download for Playstation 4 users as soon as they hop onto PSN and start the game. Bedrock will become the default version of the game and any purchases made after updating will be for the new, cross-platform version.