What Happened To Cross Game Chat?

Everyone was expecting PlayStation Plus to appear at E3, it was pretty much a dead cert, but by the same token most of us were sure that Sony would finally announce cross game chat too – the option to talk freely with other gamers over the internet, regardless of which games you were playing.

But for some reason it never emerged.  Tretton didn’t mention it, and it was missing from all the PlayStation Plus press releases when they were dished out to journalists late last night.

However, those of you up after midnight would have seen our story which revealed that, at some point at least, cross game chat was meant to be part of PlayStation Plus.  You can clearly see at the link the english text mixed in with the Dutch that highlights what would have been a major selling point to PlayStation Plus.

“Invite your friends to chat online no matter what game you’re all playing,” it said, “even if they aren’t members of PlayStation Plus.”

To us, this suggests that the feature required at least one person to be a PlayStation Plus member, and if you were you could freely invite others to chat in a party regardless of whether they were members of the subscription-based service or not.  But the line was swiftly pulled from the PlayStation website moments later.

So, what happened?  Was cross game chat simply not ready, code-wise, but somebody left it in the bulletin on the PlayStation website, untranslated? Was it meant to be part of PlayStation Plus but somebody changed their mind at the last minute and didn’t tell everyone involved with the European sites in time?

It’s a mystery indeed, and Sony have been silence on the matter since.  We still reckon it’s coming – after all, Sony themselves had let us know they were working on it at least once – but the question now is whether or not the service will be free to all, or part of PlayStation Plus in the future.

Sony have got until the end of June to work it out.