Epic Games recently announced that it will be expanding its Cross-Play tools to support all major console devices, allowing game developers to easily bring cross-platform play to their games. These tools will appear in Epic Games’ free software development kit, Epic Online Services.
Given the enormous success of Fortnite, a cross-platform multiplayer title, it’s no surprise that Epic Games is an ardent supporter of cross-play. Players on different platforms or those who bought the game from different PC stores may not experience the same. Epic’s new tools seek to overcome this hurdle by allowing developers to connect more players and integrate cross-platform features into their games. The Fortnite boss first announced the cross-play engine back in 2022, and at the time the tools were limited to PC, allowing players to connect on the Epic Games Store and Steam. Using the tool, an overlay will merge friend lists on Steam and the Epic Games Store, allowing users to broadcast game invites on both stores.
Now, Epic Games has expanded the Cross-Play tools to support PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. The overlay in the Epic Online Services Toolkit will be consistent across all PC and console platforms, making it easy for players to see all their friends. The quick creation of a new Epic Games account is linked to an account on the platform. The native platform allows multiple users to experience the game across platforms together. This suite of tools is designed to work with any engine, digital store, and platform.
The overlay will greatly simplify the process of implementing multiplayer functionality into the game, allowing friends who have the game on different console devices or different PC stores to play together. With over 750 million active Epic Games accounts and hundreds of games using Epic Online Services, that means a huge number of players will soon be able to cross-play. Crossplay is just one of the many tools offered by Epic Online Services that help game developers simplify the development process.
