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Xbox and PlayStation may be inching closer to crossplay

Microsoft is hinting at the once-impossible idea of letting Xbox and PlayStation gamers play against each other.

Dan Ackerman Editorial Director / Computers and Gaming
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Expertise I've been testing and reviewing computer and gaming hardware for over 20 years, covering every console launch since the Dreamcast and every MacBook...ever. Credentials
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Despite offering many of the same games, players of the Xbox and PlayStation console families have never been able to compete against each other online. And apart from a handful of exceptions they can't play with PC gamers either.

At the Gamescom video game trade show in Cologne, Germany this month, Microsoft 's head of marketing for Xbox Aaron Greenberg revealed that talks with Sony were happening about allowing Xbox One and PS4 gamers to play together. In a video interview with Gamereactor, Greenberg said, "We're talking to them [Sony] and we're hopeful that they'll be supportive of it."

This idea is called crossplay, and it's been a sticking point for years, with some game developers lately pointing to Sony as the road block to allowing play between console brands.

Neither Sony nor Microsoft immediately responded to a request for comment.