Playerunknown's Battlegrounds Dev Thinking About PC And Console Cross-Play

Playerunknown's Battlegrounds has been one of the most popular games on Steam since its early access release in March, and developer Bluehole announced at E3 2017 that it's bringing the game to consoles. Recently, the studio revealed that PC and console players might even be able to play together.

In an interview with VG247, executive producer Chang Han Kim commented on the possibility of cross-play functionality coming to the game. According to him, there isn't any technical reason why the developer couldn't do it. Rather, it comes down to balancing the two different control schemes.

"Cross-network play between the PC and the console is definitely something we want to do down the road, and we don't anticipate we'll have any technical issues with that," he said. "But… when you consider the competitive side of the game, I do feel that there's a balance issue between controllers and keyboard and mouse. That's what's making it difficult for us to do [it] right away."

"If we're going to allow players to use controllers, we need to have the aim assist added in and things like that," he continued. "We're not going to be supporting it right away, but it's something we'd like to look into later."

You can read a lot more from the interview with Han Kim over at VG247.

Cross-play was one of the hot topics at E3 2017, due in large part to the announcements that Minecraft and Rocket League will allow cross-play between Switch, PC, and Xbox One. The notable absence, of course, is PS4; Sony explained that its reticence to cooperate with the other companies is due to its desire to protect its player base.

Battlegrounds also had a big E3. Bluehole detailed a lot of new changes coming to the game, including a replay system and the ability to climb obstacles. In addition, the studio teased a zombies mode that's coming to the game sometime in the future. For now, however, Bluehole is focused on improving performance.