Over 10 years ago, Ubisoft had a dream to bring its players together and allow their saves, progress, rewards, and more to seamlessly travel with them no matter where they chose to play. While the journey to get there had its ups and down, Ubisoft Connect is now paving the way for how cross-save and cross-progression should be handled in this new generation of gaming. Even amid haptic feedback, SSDs and other console innovations, overcoming console barriers almost entirely (and quietly) feels like a true next-gen feature and a vision of more to come.
Ubisoft Connect launched alongside Watch Dogs: Legion in October and, in addition to allowing players to keep their progression with them on all their supported devices, it also tracks player’s stats, offers a new loyalty program with a ton of free rewards, and includes a Smart Intel feature that has similarities to the new game help functionality in the PS5 UI. However, the “magic” of Ubisoft Connect is perhaps best explained by an experience had by IGN’s Editor-In-Chief Tina Amini when she began her Viking journey in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Tina began playing Valhalla on PS4 and was planning on restarting when she received her Xbox Series X – after all, that was not only a cross-platform move, but a cross-generational one. While she did of course have to obtain the game itself a second time, her save was simply waiting for her when she started the latest Assassin’s Creed on her brand new console. She hadn’t had to do anything to make that transition happen, besides already having her platform accounts linked to her Ubisoft account at some point in the past.
While the big-ticket items dominating conversation and marketing around this PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S era have been the teraflops of power, games with support of up to 4K/120FPS, and minimal load times, quality-of-life improvements provided by services like Ubisoft Connect – and the barriers they are knocking down – are worthy of just as much praise. Just like those next-gen consoles, however, this cross-generation, cross-save, cross-play world we are living in did not come about overnight.The Road to Cross-Everything Began With Microsoft and Sony
Ubisoft Connect may be the poster child for cross-platform progression in this new generation, but the service would not even have been a possibility had both Microsoft and Sony not worked on perfecting their own versions of cross-progression and backward compatibility for many years before.
While the story is a bit different today, Sony was leading the charge into the next generation - as far as backward compatibility was concerned - with the PlayStation 2. Before its launch in 2000, previous consoles required adapters or peripherals to play older games, but the PS2 simply let you play every original PlayStation game out of the box.
The Xbox 360, on the other hand, was a bit more complicated. While it did support backward compatibility, those wishing to play games like Halo: Combat Evolved or NFL Fever 2004 would need an official Microsoft HDD, as it would be needed to store an emulator that was required to run these Xbox games, albeit without the ability to transfer saves or DLC.
As the generations came and went, backward compatibility was moved out of focus, so much so that the Xbox One and PS4 both launched without any native support for older titles. However, Xbox head Phil Spencer and Microsoft VP Kareem Choudhry had been devising a plan behind-the-scenes that would bring it back to the forefront, all culminating with the exciting reveal at E3 2015 that over 100 select Xbox 360 games would be playable on Xbox One by that year’s holiday season.
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In addition to all of this, Microsoft built its own version of a Netflix-style subscription service called Xbox Game Pass and began offering not only a great selection of third-party titles, but its own first-party exclusives on the day they are released. This, alongside its Xbox Play Anywhere initiative that lets you purchase a game once and have access to it and your saves seamlessly on Xbox consoles and PC, allowed Microsoft to have every Xbox One, Xbox 360, and original Xbox game playable on Xbox One – except for a handful that require Kinect – available at the launch of the Xbox Series X/S, saves and all.
Sony’s story was a bit different. While it was able to ensure that 99% of all PS4 games would be playable on PS5, saves are not automatically transferred and it currently does not offer a native solution to play PS1, PS2, and PS3 games. Some PS2 and PS3 games are available on PS Now - PlayStation’s streaming service - but it is not as simple of a solution as the one provided by Xbox.
All these steps - both good and bad - show the differing approaches that Sony and Microsoft have taken in regards to backward compatibility. But it doesn’t end there, as cross-play was another big piece of the puzzle that was missing in this quest for cross-everything. Those moves have further exemplified the divide between these two companies.
[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/01/24/ps5-and-xbox-series-x-are-both-backward-compatible-and-thats-a-big-deal"]
Breaking Down the Console Barriers with Cross-Play
For the longest time, if you wanted to play a game online with your friends, you would all have to be on the same system. However, games like Rocket League, Fortnite, Call of Duty, and Minecraft took some of the first and most important leaps into a world where you could play with your friends, no matter what platform you were playing on.
The road to cross-play wasn’t an easy one, however, and Sony was perhaps most hesitant on the way to a more shared gaming world. In 2016, Rocket League developer Psyonix revealed that PS4 and Xbox One cross-play was ready, could be turned on in “less than a business day,” and that it just needed Sony’s approval. Unfortunately, it took more than just that business day, as full cross-platform play in Rocket League did not become available until early 2019.
Sony’s decision to allow cross-play in Rocket League was in part a result of a controversy that occurred during E3 2018 when Fortnite was made available for Nintendo Switch. Players quickly found out that if they played even one game of Fortnite on PS4, they could not carry over their existing Epic Games account to the Switch, let alone play with others on opposing consoles.