It was good news for Fortnite fans as Nintendo confirmed that the game would be live on the Switch this afternoon. But many players immediately ran into a wall they weren’t expecting.
While it was known that Sony would be sitting out the kind of cross-play enjoyed between Fortnite players on mobile, PC, Xbox One and Switch, PS4 is even further removed than many assumed.
Not only can you not play with your Switch friends on PS4 and vice versa, you cannot use a PS4-linked account on the Switch, and vice versa.
If you do you will be treated to a message from Epic that throws a fair amount of indirect shade at Sony.
“This Fortnite account is associated with a platform which does not allow it to operate on Switch. Neither the Fortnite website nor Epic Customer Service are able to change this. To play Fortnite on Switch, please create a new account.”
With this message Epic is trying to head off complaints that may otherwise be directed at them, with players think this was some sort of error, or something Epic could fix, while pretty much saying “this is Sony’s fault” without stating it outright.
Xbox players have been familiar with this message already. The same one appears when you try to play a PS4-linked account on Xbox, and vice versa. But even if that has always been the case, the situation with the Switch is different.
Because the Xbox and PS4 are so similar, chances are if you’re picking one console to play on, you wouldn’t be switching back and forth between them, so a lack of account sharing isn’t as big of a deal. But with the Switch, often owned as a secondary console to the PS4 or Xbox One, the goal is obviously for many players to be able to play on the go or around the house in handheld mode. But now most are realizing that in order to do that, they’ll have to start over if they have their current account linked to PS4.
For example, my colleague Erik Kain, a PS4 player, was excited to play Fortnite with his kids. He was upset he couldn’t do it on PS4, so he said he was going to switch to Xbox while his kids played Switch. Buuuut he can’t even do that, because he will be unable to access his PS4 account, meaning all battle passes and skins he’s bought won’t be on his new account, and any progression he makes on a new Xbox/Switch account will not cross over at all to his main PS4 account. And I know that a lot of people are likely running into similar situations right about now, people who have spent a lot of time and money building up their PS4 accounts that are now useless on Switch.
Sony has gotten flak for avoiding cross-play in the past, but I have a feeling they’re about to get hit with a hurricane of Fortnite-fueled anger. Fortnite is such a global phenomenon that this might actually be enough to finally get them to budge on this issue if there’s enough pushback. While not being able to play with Xbox or Switch players on PS4 sucks, it’s another matter entirely to have people locked out of their main accounts entirely when trying to play on a new platform like this, and I do not blame people for being mad about it. This is total nonsense.
While I’ve given Microsoft a bit of a hard time for its “kumbaya, bring all games to all platforms” mantra as of late, it’s certainly looking like an alternative to Sony’s sky-high walls it’s built around PlayStation. This has to change, and Fortnite might finally be the game to hack those walls down, if fans can unite and reject this behavior.
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