The idea of playing a console version of a video game against the same game on PC seems like a crazy idea. Look, professional players on consoles are great, but there is simply no way that a controller can compete with a keyboard/mouse combo.
That said Gear of War 4 gave the whole cross-play thing a try this last December during a weekend test. They were looking to see just what would happen if Xbox One and PC players were allowed to mingle.
The studio has gone over all the numbers and data from that weekend and come made a statement today regarding the future of cross-play between PC and Xbox One.
“Today, we are excited to announce a major step in the future of Gears of War 4 Versus Multiplayer with the introduction of cross-play between Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs in Social Quickplay!”
Social Quickplay (the name of the new mode) is out now, but the studio has made it clear that the next few months will be a trial period to make sure that the test weekend wasn’t some anomaly of awesome.
This new cross-play won’t carry over to the Core and Competitive portions of the game so that PC players ddon’t take over the entire Gear of 4 leaderboards.