Elden Ring crossplay would be one helluva boon to the enormous community which has cropped up around the game on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. Even cross save would really help — allowing users to carry their sometimes hundreds of hours of game time between platforms. Sadly, not every game under the sun can be relied upon to include crossplay. That’s why we put together these little crossplay / cross progression guides! So let’s take a look at what Elden Ring has running under this particular hood.
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Does Elden Ring Have Crossplay Support?
Nope… Elden Ring sports some really incredible innovations for a FromSoftware title. The game is much more forgiving about cooperative play, in particular, and allows friends to join up effectively infinitely. Dark Souls and Bloodborne relied on rare in-game consumables and/or currencies to activate co-op. Elden Ring simply lets you craft the relevant item (called a Furlcalling Finger Remedy) infinitely. There are also structures in-game that let you make yourself available to summon across multiple dungeons (called Summoning Pools).
None of these enhancements extend to Elden Ring crossplay. Nor even cross save. Once you buy the game for PC, Xbox, or PlayStation, that’s it. You’re stuck with your particular ecosystem unless you buy another copy. PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 players can interact with each other, of course, but that really feels like it should be a given at this point.
This is all disappointing, but hardly unexpected. Elden Ring is a marvelous game, but despite lots of experience with multiplayer over the years, FromSoft doesn’t have the most sterling track record with technical prowess. Remember how you can’t slide down ladders in Dark Souls: Remastered because a high frame rate makes you fall through the world? Yeah…
There’s always hope for Elden Ring 2 now that the team has some walking around money.
The State of Crossplay and Cross Platform Support
Crossplay support only gets more popular with time! Odds are that it will be the norm before too long. Until then, though, the majority of cross platform multiplayer games don’t fully include it. When they do, it’s often restricted to players on one console playing with those on PC. Microsoft and Sony seem to view the PC as neutral ground. Similarly, Nintendo doesn’t publicly seem to have qualms about crossplay and especially cross-save or cross-progression when purchasing games for its handheld device.
Microsoft in particular has extra incentive in the form of its “play anywhere policy.” Typically, if you buy a digital copy of a Microsoft first-party exclusive, you get to own it both on Xbox and PC — free of additional charge. At that point there’s really no reason not to let folks play together. Throw in services like Xbox Game Pass (which is now on PC) and things get even easier.
Sony has historically taken pretty much the opposite approach. The company was far and away the sales leader on the last generation of consoles. That incentivized it to not to play well with others — nor allow its partner studios to do so on its hardware. Sony first-party exclusives never traditionally came to PC, either. It was PlayStation or nothing. Though that’s slowly changing with the likes of Horizon: Zero Dawn, Days Gone, and even God of War. Though there’s usually a major delay. Even so, Sony has announced its crossplay solution has exited “beta” and should be freely available to all. Assuming, of course, that the developers agree to pay extra.
