Can't say I'm not surprised. Not entirely, but mostly. I knew PS wouldn't do it with the heat on like it was, but I thought they would wait longer, which makes me suspicious of why the need for so much good will all of the sudden? First Spider-Man, then a classic console, then PS Now downloads, now cross play, while gamer tag change is supposedly on the way before xmas. There is no reason apparent at the moment for a bombardment of pro consumer greatness at this time. Why? Something must be up.
I can't help but notice the irony of the cross play situation at the moment. So much hatred towards PS and it's anti consumer ways leading to arrogant SNY talk returning. Coincidentally, now that Nin was receiving a similar type of backlash for their online offering and policies, leading to anti consumer talk, PS decides to put out the fire on their own end. This is definitely another business tactic. PS didn't even make it sound like they wanted to do it, but they knew it could be used to kill at least two birds or more with one stone by doing it now.
While I would on one hand imagine this means no more handhelds from PS since their basically telling you go buy a Switch if you want to play on the go, they have now 'lied' about not wanting cross play, and not wanting old crappy retro games. They are 2 for 2 for so far. What about more recently and not wanting anything to do with handhelds? 3 4 3 soon?
There are positives and negatives for PS with cross play. As for negatives, anyone who wanted a Switch or XB1 for whatever reason, can now get one and play Fortnite and some future games against PS players. How many people that is exactly would seem to be few, otherwise PS would be giving up many things. It also helps to prove if people make enough noise, they can get their way. In the future if there is something that is definitely going to really hurt the PS business or franchise, money related or not, they may have a hard time telling those people no because now you've opened the door. Hopefully MS doesn't decide to become too consumer friendly and drop paywalls and hardware prices because why buy a PS4 for cross play games like Fortnite, if there is no longer a Live paywall and/or if XB1 is much cheaper than PS4? With the cheap streaming 'XB2' option rumors, it really makes me wonder if MS has thought this through in terms of hardware and price. Games like Fortnite don't require the most powerful hardware ever. Some users here made it fairly clear they didn't want to have to pay for cross play, yet another charge. Money is made off micro transactions with these games, so making sure people are buying that game on your own platform really matters. PS lost some of that leverage.
As for positives, it will get rid of the negativity that surrounded cross play, however small, and will only allow it to be a small smear on their legacy (for the time being), so as not to damage the brand going forward, unlike XB1 this gen. It should also gain them some goodwill and some more sales. They made it clear it's only for Fortnite at the moment, and third party games, so they can take their time now if they like and slowly allow existing games to cross over while they keep profiting until then. They also can direct most of any future negativity about cross play towards the pubs and devs. Even though Epic should've been taking way more heat, PS can now point the finger at the games themselves. This may actually help PS to some degree in the future. Any dev or pub who doesn't want cross play for whatever reason, may be slightly upset PS caved, but PS can easily point out the PR pressure they were put under, mostly by MS, and this may very well but a bad taste in those devs/pubs mouth's when it comes to dealing with XB in the future.
Personally, it's not a big deal for me, as long as the option exists to enable or disable cross play if I want. I do think this could very well come back to bite PS in the butt in the future though. I kind of wonder if they didn't necessarily cave, but maybe are actually getting that cocky that they figure they no longer need cross play as leverage. That may be true in this gen, but next gen could be a different story, unless they have aces up their sleeves. I sure hope those aces aren't starting next gen off without cross play on PS5. MS may be able to get away with offering monthly plans late in the gen, only to pull them when the next gen starts, but if PS tries pulling cross play with PS5, it's going to blow up in their face unless MS follows suit.
