Apex Legends announced that cross-play beta is finally launching tomorrow, October 6. With this, players can now party up with friends whether they are on the PC, PlayStation 4, or Xbox One. Today we look at what this new feature is all about.
The arrival of cross-play to Apex Legends was confirmed by none other than Game Director Chad Grenier. In a post, Grenier revealed that since the game was launched, cross-play continues to be “one of the most requested features from our players who want the ability to play with their friends on other platforms.”
During this beta stage, players get full access to the cross-play feature while, according to Grenier, Respawn “collects data, tests the feature at scale, and most importantly listens to you, the fans, for feedback.” Here’s how things are going to work:
- Players can party up and play together across all currently supported platforms which are PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Origin.
- Steam will also be included once cross-play formally launches.
- Cross platform play is enabled by default.
- Unless you made any changes, you should be good to go.
- To add a friend on any platform, go to the friends menu and click “Find Friend”.
- You should be able to search for a user name on any platform and initiate a friend request.
- The invited user then receives a notification in the lobby to accept, reject, or block the incoming friend request.
- Blocking a friend request not only rejects the request, but also prevents you from seeing additional cross-play invitations or requests in the future from that user.
- You can find and unblock users from inside the find friends menu.
- You can view all friends in the friends menu and which platform they’re on, indicated with a platform icon.
- If you’re on a console, friends on the same platform are going to be be marked with a PlayStation or Xbox icon depending on which platform you’re on, and players on the other brand console are going to be indicated by a generic gamepad icon.
- Once friends, you can initiate a game invite via the friends menu.
- For cross-platform party invites, the party invitation is going to appear in the lobby screen and allow you to join the party.
- Same platform party invites continue to use the default notifications as before.
- Cross platform parties can use in-game voice chat.
- Cross-play does not mean cross-progression.
Here is how the matchmaking is going to work:
- Before cross-play, each platform would only play with and against other users on the same platform.
- Now, all console players can play together, and PC players can continue to play only with other PC players.
- This is to ensure that keyboard and mouse PC players are not being matched against console players, for reasons that should be obvious.
- If, however, an Xbox One or PlayStation 4 player and PC player party up together, they are going to be put into PC matches.
- This ensures that the console games don’t have PC players in them, but still allows for the console player to play with their PC friend if they opt-in.
