One of the good things about computer games is that if you’re running on Windows and another gamer is running on Mac, both players will still be able to play with each other as long as the game is available on either platform. However it seems that the same cannot be said for console. Speaking to Digital Trends, Bungie engineer Roger Wolfson revealed by Destiny will not be getting cross-play functionality.
According to Wolfson, “I’ll speak for the hypothetical player. I have a disadvantage sniping across the map because [my opponent with a next-gen console] is only two pixels on my screen and I’m four pixels on his.” He later compares it to PC gaming, where PC gamers try to give themselves an edge over their opponent by having better hardware.
“You see that in the world of PC gaming, where people are always racing to the best video card to give themselves the advantage. Regardless of where the reality is, there’s definitely a perception among gamers that better hardware means you have an advantage. We don’t want to have to enter that fray, so to create the best, most level playing field, both actually and perceptually, we separated it by platform.”
This makes a lot of sense, since we’re sure the last thing the developers want marring their $500 million game would be complaints of how a PS4 gamer got an edge over the Xbox One gamer just because of hardware. However in the meantime, gamers will be pleased to learn that their characters and progress from consoles can be moved around, so if you bought the game for the Xbox 360 but you want to upgrade to the Xbox One, you will be able to carry on your progress just fine.