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Bethesda has revealed that it won't release The Elder Scrolls Legends on any formats that don't support cross-platform play.
Speaking during an interview with Game Informer, Bethesda mouthpiece Pete Hines made it clear that the feature is an integral component in the fantasy-flavoured card strategy title, and therefore no exceptions will be made in this respect.
Bottom line: if a console doesn't have cross-play, The Elder Scrolls Legends won't be on it.
'[The Elder Scrolls Legends] is a strategy card game that encompasses both single and multiplayer,' said Hines. 'It is both cross-platform play and cross-platform progress … It is our intention in order for the game to come out, it has to be those things on any system.
'We cannot have a game that works one way across everywhere else except for on this one thing. The way the game works right now on Apple, Google, Steam, and Bethesda.net, it doesn’t matter where you buy your stuff, if you play it on another platform that stuff is there. It doesn’t matter what platform you play on, you play against everyone else who is playing at that moment. There’s no "Oh, it’s easier to control, or it has a better framerate on this system." It’s a strategy card game. It doesn’t matter.'
The massived elephant in the room here is obviously Sony, who obstinately refuses to allow cross-platform play with Xbox One and Switch users.
While Hines didn't name Sony specifically, it's pretty easy to read between the lines: The Elder Scrolls Legends will skip PlayStation 4 unless Sony decides to change its policy on cross-platform functionality.
'We continue to talk to all of our platform partners,' added Hines, 'But those [terms] are essentially non-negotiable. We can’t be talking about one version of Legends, where you take your progress with you, and another version where you stay within that ecosystem or its walled off from everything else. That is counter to what the game has been about.'
Bethesda has touched base on the lack of PS4 cross-platform play in the past, specifically when Todd Howard seemingly blamed Sony as the reason why Fallout 76 won't support the feature.
The hardware giant pissed a lot of gamers off earlier this year, when it was discovered that you can't play Fortnite on a rival console if you already have the game up and running on your PS4.
