Warframe crossplay, otherwise known as cross platform play, seems pretty obvious. The game doesn’t joke around when it comes to implementing new features. It seems like every single year the game reinvents itself from the ground up. And while it originally came out only on PC, Warframe has since come to several other platforms as well. The free-to-play shooter was even a PlayStation 4 launch title. The question now is: does Warframe crossplay exist today? Let’s take a look!
Does Warframe Have Crossplay Support?
Warframe is a cross platform game. It’s on just about everything besides phones and toasters. However, at this time, Warframe does not support crossplay in any way. It’s even worse than that, really. The game has an absolutely terrible time delay between all home console versions and the PC release. Basically, Warframe players on PC get every piece of new content months ahead of those on Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft hardware.
There is a very small silver lining… You can migrate your in-game account exactly once. That means most of the progress you make in one version of the game is free to transfer to another version. However, since the versions are so out of sync, you can’t just continue going back and forth over and over again. That sort of “cross save,” seen in Destiny 2, would be great. But cross platform Warframe transfers are very restrictive by comparison.
We’ve bugged developer Digital Extremes about this very issue in interviews and at TennoCon before. We’re not the only ones, either, I’d wager. Yet we always get the same response. Digital Extremes would love to implement Warframe crossplay, but it’s still a “pie in the sky” feature. Honestly, though? I wouldn’t put anything past that company. Warframe grows and changes in unexpected ways every other month. Cross platform play would be far from the strangest or most “unrealistic” thing to see. Here’s to keeping our fingers crossed.
Warframe is currently free on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC. It will also be coming to PlayStation 5.
UPDATE: In a PlayStation Blog post, Sony confirmed that Warframe is coming to the PS5 generation of hardware. In the same breath, it mentions both “cross-save and cross-play.” Though it only specifies this to mean working across PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 hardware. We’ve reached out to Digital Extremes for more details.
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 vast 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.
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 and things get even easier.
Sony takes pretty much the opposite approach. The company is far and away the sales leader on this generation of consoles. That incentivizes it not to play well with others — or allow its partner studios to do so on its hardware. In addition, Sony first-party exclusives basically never come out on PC. It’s PlayStation or nothing. Although there are a number of third-party games only available on PlayStation and PC that do feature crossplay (e.g. Final Fantasy 14).
More Warframe News & Guides:
- Warframe Faces Criticisms, Review Bomb Over Chinese Translator Controversy
- Atlas Prime Warframe Brings a Deadly Companion Cube to Battle ‘Soon’
- Nightwave Weekly Warframe Guide – The Silver Grove, Apothic Plants
Fortnite managed to push the envelope a bit by virtue of being one of the biggest games on the planet. Developer Epic Games also pushed the issue when it “accidentally” turned on Fortnite crossplay for a short time — thereby proving it wasn’t a technical limitation. That sparked a conversation around crossplay games over the entire industry. But while Sony has said it is “open for business” when it comes to cross platform play, many developers say otherwise (both publicly and privately).
Speaking of some of the biggest games in the world, Minecraft is another strange case. Microsoft purchased the franchise from fictional character Hatsune Miku in 2014. But Minecraft, of course, was already on every platform under the sun. That included Sony and Nintendo hardware. Microsoft and Nintendo have seemingly played nice ever since. Whereas Sony continues to play the Scrooge on video game Christmas Eve.
The “technical limitation” argument does hold some water, however. Many current and even upcoming games were built with the assumption that crossplay would not be an option. Some studios have the resources, time, and/or singular focus to get around that. Others do not. With the present state of crossplay, however, it’s very difficult to imagine it not becoming the norm at a technical and policy level. If we get to the next generation of console hardware without crossplay being the norm, then you know we have a problem…
