 E3 is over, but really things have only just begun. As anyone who has followed E3 over the years knows, in the coming days, weeks, and even months there are going to be new interviews released that deal with all the various games, whether it's Assassin's Creed Origins, or Super Mario Odyssey, whatever the case may be, there's a ton of news still to come. But we're not talking about any of that today. Because the one thing happened during E3 that I want to address just because it infuriates me. And it infuriates me in a way because it kinda promotes something that I am vehemently against. If you guys remember, I made a video some time ago about how I think console wars and fanboyism is stupid. And yes, I know it's ironic, I'm a Nintendo only channel, I'm a Nintendo fan, but that doesn't change my opinion on the fact that I think this is all stupid. But what happened this past E3 has rekindled the console wars and fanboy wars with, I can't say it's anything other than intent. So here's what happened. On the plus side, Nintendo Switch has crossplay with Minecraft and Rocket League. This crossplay is a wholly good thing for gamers of all platforms that are involved in it. So it has crossplay with Xbox One players and PC gamers for both Minecraft and Rocket League. But you'll note that one major platform, the current console leader in the market, is not among them. That's right. Sony denied crossplay to Minecraft and denied it to Rocket League. And it should be noted that Minecraft and Rocket League are made by two separate companies, one a hardware company, one just a software company, an indie developer at that. One does require the use of Xbox Live. That would obviously be Minecraft since that's what Microsoft owns and they want to run everything on their servers. And then the other's Rocket League, which does not involve anyone's specific platform. You don't have to use Xbox Live or PSN or Nintendo Switch's online account system. It doesn't matter that they're not doing the crossplay in that fashion. So why is Sony not allowing crossplay? Why are they denying Switch users and Xbox users and PC users the ability to play with people who play, say, Minecraft on a PlayStation 4? Well, the reasoning essentially boils down to they want to protect children. So Sony's Jim Ryan, the global head of sales and marketing at Sony, had this to say when it came to crossplay, especially really just in terms of Minecraft. They haven't officially commented on Rocket League. He said, we've got to be mindful of our responsibility to our install base. Minecraft, the demographic playing that you know, as well as I do, it's all ages, but it's also very young. We have a contract with the people that go online with us that we look after them and they are within the PlayStation curated universe. Exposing what in many cases are children to external influences we have no ability to manage or look after is something we have to think about very carefully. And this was in response to a question about why they do not have crossplay with Minecraft. Now, this just flies in the face of everything. Basically, because crossplay with Minecraft works through Xbox Live, they are throwing Microsoft under the bus. They're saying Microsoft doesn't do a good job protecting children in this case. And while it's easy to argue that when you go online on an Xbox console, you can maybe hear some more swearing inappropriate chatter than say on the PlayStation console, you can still hear that inappropriate chatter also on the PlayStation 4. It's not really exclusive to Xbox. There might be less of it, but it's not because Sony's actually doing anything. It's just that the audience for the PlayStation 4 is more adult oriented, whereas the audience for the Xbox is more teenage oriented. And that doesn't mean there aren't adult people on Xbox One. I am 30 years old. I own an Xbox One and I plan to get an Xbox One X. I'm obviously among that more adult oriented group that likes Xbox. However, this really just accuses Microsoft of having an inability to do a good job managing things. And this is a little ironic considering that Nintendo, the company that's always been about protecting children first and foremost, is on board with this crossplay. And in addition to all of this nonsense that Sony's spewing out, Minecraft is owned by Microsoft. So it doesn't even have to be on a Sony platform. The user base that uses Minecraft is playing Microsoft's game. So they're already using Microsoft's game in Microsoft's ecosystem. They might not be using Xbox Live to communicate while they play that game, but it's still Microsoft's game. So it's still Microsoft's fan base for Minecraft. It's still Minecraft's fan base. Sony is essentially saying because we can't control the online interactions, we don't want our Minecraft players playing with your Minecraft players, even though it's all Microsoft's Minecraft players. Microsoft owns Minecraft. And the company that owns Rocket League is like the same thing. There's no Xbox Live curation going on. And still they're cutting off Rocket League saying no, our players cannot play with your players. And it's an absolute asinine thing that really, really only hurts Sony's own consumers, right? This doesn't hurt Switch gamers or Xbox gamers or PC gamers outside of the fact that if you have friends that play Minecraft and Rocket League on PlayStation 4 and you would like to play them on your Nintendo Switch or Xbox or PC, you obviously can't because Sony's just being dicks. However, let's just bring Xbox's head, their chief, their master, Phil Spencer, in the mix and let him give you his opinion on Sony's accusations with Minecraft. I will jump on another grenade on this one. But the fact that somebody would kind of make an assertion that somehow we're not keeping Minecraft players safe. I found not only from a Microsoft perspective, from a game industry perspective, like I don't know why that has to become the dialogue. Like that doesn't seem healthy for anyone. And I feel we can always do better with everything that we do. I feel great our relationship with Minecraft. From the time we originally brought it over to 360, we've obviously owned it now for a couple years and where it's gone. And I just really found the whole discussion around safety with our game and that somehow we wouldn't take that as a top priority. And frankly, through our parental controls on Xbox Live and everything else that we've done, shown that that's incredibly important to us as a platform. That stuff exists. And also, we're talking about Minecraft. That's right. And frankly, and Nintendo, like we're on, like, you know. Yeah, you want to talk about people that are like, maybe overly protective in spots, like there you go. Yeah, they'll lock it down. But the door is open. I don't mean to like shut the, I'd love all Minecraft players to have the full Minecraft experience. We take the safety of Xbox Live, of our players across all of our games, inside of Minecraft, obviously an incredibly important part of that. There's, it's incredibly important to our team. And the work that they do around parental controls, and frankly, accessibility and everything else, that yeah, it's, we would never put Minecraft in a place where we felt like it wasn't, we weren't keeping our players safe. And there you have it. Phil Spencer thinks this is all ridiculous as well. And obviously he's going to say that because he's on Microsoft's side of things. But it's hard to, you know, even if you want to argue that Sony does a better job protecting children than maybe Microsoft does, or apparently better than Nintendo does, like really, it's, it's one of those things that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. It's harming consumers. And on top of that, this is in addition to the fact that Sony just paid money to have exclusive DLC for Destiny 2, at a time when Phil Spencer also came out and said that exclusive content for multi-platform games is stupid and anti-consumer because it is. And Xbox would know this because they used to do this, right? They used to pay for exclusive content for Call of Duty and all these other games that generally were before Phil Spencer took over as head of Xbox. So Phil Spencer recognized that this is really anti-consumer. You shouldn't be trying to tell consumers where the content is going to be, what it's going to be, and that there's going to be a difference in it, or getting timed exclusive content. Well, blah, blah, like timed exclusive games are different because generally the game might not have existed if it wasn't for that financial backing. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about DLC. Destiny 2 was going to exist with or without exclusive content to Sony. So this is all just kind of a big conundrum where Sony is not letting go of console wars. They are still fighting a battle that a lot of fans are kind of over, are starting to get over. And yes, there's always going to be fanboys. There's always going to be those, you know, there's going to be people down in the comments below that are going to tell me how wrong I am and that Sony is white-niting and fighting the evil Microsoft and Xbox and that Nintendo is stupid for doing what they're doing. But are they? Like, I don't really understand Sony's point of view here regardless of if they lose control of their own Minecraft player base. Who cares? They're still playing the game on your platform. They still have to have a subscription to your network to even access Minecraft online. So like, you're still getting everything you want. They're just communicating over Xbox Live to communicate with the rest of the people that play that game. They're like, who cares? That, oh no, there's a naughty Minecraft abuser and they got to report to Xbox Live instead of reporting to PlayStation Network. Who cares? It's Microsoft's game. Like, most games include their own way to ban people. Like when you play Call of Duty, you have an ability to filter people through the game that is irrelevant of Sony and Microsoft. Like, you can go through Activision to get this user taken care of. So it's not really that any different here except you have to go to Microsoft and Microsoft owns Minecraft. So what's the problem? And the fact that this affects Rocket League, which has nothing to do with Xbox Live, also throws that excuse way out the window because PlayStation could still control a lot of stuff. I feel bad for PlayStation owners that we're maybe hoping that their friends who play Xbox or other PC gaming friends or even friends that play Switch, they were hoping to maybe play with them on vice versa Switch and PC and Xbox owners that were hoping to play some of these games with their PlayStation owners. It feels like we're entering an era where console wars are not nearly as relevant as they once were, where Nintendo is like super supportive of Sony and Microsoft going off and going for power and doing their traditional box thing as Nintendo explores new territory and Sony and Microsoft seem to be supportive of the Switch doing the same thing. But then we have Sony kind of fighting back saying, look, we have some sour grapes here and we don't want our consumers intermingling with other gamers' consumers. We don't want to bring gamers together. We want to keep everything segregated in our own ecosystem. And it's kind of ridiculous, if I'm being honest. We live in an age, an online age, where there's no excuse not to bring everyone together, especially for cross play. Cross play is a uniformly good thing. All Call of Duty players on all platforms should be able to play against each other. All Minecraft players should be able to. All Assassin's Creed Origins and multiplayer should be able to play against each other. And obviously for Minecraft, it's going to be controlled by Microsoft because they're the people that made it. Just like for Rocket League, they're going to control their audience as well. And they're not going to use Xbox Live because they're not Microsoft. Sony could have a multi-platform game. They don't have any right now. But let's say they released a multi-platform game and then they could argue that they should be able to use PlayStation Network on Xbox One and Switch. And I bet you Microsoft and Nintendo would have no problem with this. So at the end of the day, I just, I hate that we're even talking about this. That in 2017, halfway through, we're halfway to 2018, and we're talking about a company that is extremely anti-consumer. And the thing is, it's probably not going to affect their bottom line. PlayStation 4 will probably still be the best-selling system this year, even with the Xbox One X coming out. PlayStation 4 Pro will probably even outsell the Xbox One X this year. And at the end of the day, Sony's just going to be laughing all the way to the bank. But it doesn't change the fact that this sort of attitude needs to leave gaming. It does not belong in gaming. If Sony has issues, they should work it out behind the scenes with Microsoft to make this work. They should work it out behind the scenes with the makers of Rocket League to make this work. Because cross-play is a good thing for their own consumers. They are giving their own consumers of PlayStation an inferior experience because they want to. Because they want to act like children. And I can't get behind this. It really fuels the whole console war and fanboyism basically. We're better at curating our network than Microsoft is. We don't trust them. We don't trust this. We have to protect kids because Microsoft doesn't protect kids. And Nintendo obviously doesn't care about protecting kids either because now they're throwing their hat in with Microsoft. And it's just, this attitude needs to leave. There are such a thing as healthy competition. It is good that Xbox One X is $499 and doing this true 4K thing while the PlayStation 4 Pro doesn't. That's all marketing spin, right? Microsoft's gonna try to make their box seem like it's better than the competitor's box. But they're not doing this by going out and attacking Sony at the core. They're not saying that the last of us, the new last of us stuff looks terrible or that the new Uncharted stuff looks terrible or that Spider-Man looks terrible. In fact, Phil Spencer went off to say that Spider-Man looks fantastic. Like, these games look good. They have nothing against Sony. You know, they're just doing marketing spin to make their box feel like it's a better prospect for the price than, say, the PlayStation 4 Pro. And that's what you're supposed to do, just like the Nintendo Switch tries to make itself a better prospect than, say, a PlayStation Vita or, you know, just gaming on a smart device or even gaming on the 3DS. They try to make differentiators that make these products separate and different for different audiences. And at the end of the day, that's all healthy and good. That's good for the industry. It's good to push each other. This is just not good what Sony's doing. And I'm not going to talk about Sony a whole lot here at Nintendo Prime, but this impacts Switch users as well. I personally am impacted by this. I actually have a pretty large group of friends that plays exclusively on PlayStation 4 and they play Rocket League and they play Minecraft. And while I personally wasn't going to play much Minecraft with them, because I'm not really that into Minecraft, I was looking forward to playing some Rocket League with them and to know that that's just not possible. Like if they're at their house and I'm at my house, we can't play Rocket League together. Just because of how selfish Sony is being really bugs me. And if I'm being honest, it bugs them as well. They were the first people to call me up and be like, hey, can you find out why Sony's doing this? And I'm like, well, I don't really have contacts at Sony. You know, I've got a couple PR guys at Nintendo. I don't have contacts at Sony. But you know, whatever. I asked Nintendo if they could point me in the direction of contacts for Sony and they gave me one, but I haven't gotten a response. I'm probably not going to get a response. What Sony has stated publicly is probably what they're going to stick by for a long time. Anyways, I'm Nathan Ruffa-Jance from Nintendo Prime. I deeply apologize for taking a video to talk about this, but it really bothers me. We as gamers should be coming together and not segregating because companies don't want to participate with other companies on multi-platform games. It's just sickening. And I think as we get into 2018, if there's one thing that comes next year, I want to start seeing these walls torn down. The console wars torn down where it's all about bringing gamers together and the competition is just creating either exclusive content, like not like DLC, I mean like games, like getting great first and second party games or funding amazing third party games. And then at the same time, you know, making the competition about creating better products rather than about segregation. This is Nathan Ruffa-Jance from Nintendo Prime. If you liked this video, you know what to do. If you disliked it, well hit that dislike button, that's all right. If you want to see more videos like this or some other series we have, like set up Crusade and some podcast stuff and other discussions and news, obviously subscribe to our channel right here on YouTube. If you want all the latest Nintendo news, check out NintendoPrime.net. We post a bunch of news there every single day. Otherwise, I will catch you guys in the next one.