I do agree, like I said, forcing it is wrong, but so is blocking it entirely.
I remember fondly playing PS2 with my ethernet adapter, fun times, RE:OB & Socom are still some of the best experiences I’ve had with MP.
The fact they had it and then later didn’t/actively restricted it, just makes it even worse though – and they are STILL restricting it today for a lot of devs + charging developers in some scenarios for it.
Whether MS’s support of cross-play had to do with poor sales or not we’ll likely never know, but I don’t get why they would push it for that reason, it wont help them increase hardware sales, if anything it’ll decrease them since I wouldn’t have buy an XBox just to play with friends. The idea that cross-play somehow improves their hardware ratio makes no sense.
It’s clear though, that the industry has been moving in that direction heavily since a few years back, developers/publishers want the biggest matchmaking pool available and aren’t willing to be tied to single platforms really. Fortnite is the game that really helped push that forward, and Epic are (rightfully so) quite aggressive in that space.
