Gearbox has recently announced that its new Borderlands spin-off game, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, will have cross-play across all platforms. Gearbox Founder and CEO, Randy Pitchford, tweeted, “Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands will ship on March 25 with full cross play for all platforms at launch, including PlayStation. Incredible work from the engineers at Gearbox Software with thanks to our partners at 2k Games and 1st parties, including Sony, for working together on this”. With this announcement, this marks Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands the first Borderlands game that allows players from Xbox and Playstation to play together.
Despite cross-play starting to become a staple in multiplayer games in 2018-2019, Borderlands 3 was released in September of 2019 without it. In May of 2021, Borderlands 3 released an update allowing cross-play among all platforms, except PS4 and PS5. Now, after the announcement of Tiny Tina’s Wonderland’s cross-play, Pitchford responded to an inquirer about Borderlands 3 cross-play on twitter with: “BL3 has supported crossplay for sometime. The future addition of PlayStation to crossplay for BL3 is now what I would consider to be inevitable. More info to come as soon as we have it…”
It has been no secret that Sony has been against cross-play for years. Sony had initially banned cross-play for Minecraft and Rocket League, even though Microsoft and Nintendo allowed their players to play across their systems. Sony’s antagonism towards cross-play came to head when Sony blocked Playstation cross-play for Fortnite in 2018, resulting in an immense wave of complaints. However, due to the massive popularity of Fortnite, catapulting the game into the world’s zeitgeist, Sony was forced to concede and allow cross-play.
While some games still refuse to allow cross-play, like FIFA and Madden, it appears cross-play may become the new standard. With Call of Duty, Battlefield, and now Gearbox’s Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands allowing cross-play, owning a certain system may now dwindle down to preferences and console-exclusive games. Gone are the days of friends all needing the same console to play together.