Ark: Survival Evolved cross-play would take "a few days" to enable

Studio Wildcard has emphasised the relative simplicity of enabling cross-play between PlayStation and Xbox versions of Ark: Survival Evolved, echoing similar statements made by Psyonix regarding cross-play for Rocket League.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Studio Wildcard co-founder Jesse Rapczak said that cross-play is a feature that "everybody asks for and everybody wants to do," and yet "policy issues" within PlayStation are preventing Ark's community from being united.

"If all those Ark players want to be satisfied and play together, these cross-network play policy things really need to get sorted out - and then we'll do it," he said. "We're really excited about it."

Jeremy Stieglitz, Rapczak's fellow founder, added that enabling cross-play is far from complicated on a technical level. "There's nothing preventing it. And yes, we have it running internally," he said. "We think it's cool and we would like to make it happen, so if the policies change we'd like to be first in line to turn it on.

"It honestly would not take us more than a few days to enable it."

Sony's reluctance to allow its customers to play Ark: Survival Evolved with Xbox owners was highlighted by Stieglitz last week, when he tweeted that PlayStation "won't allow" the feature to be turned on. Studio Wildcard's new comments regarding the simplicity of the process are also reminiscent of quotes from Psyonix about Rocket League during E3.

"We believe it's the future of the industry, and we're hopeful that maybe the community and the media can actually help get around the idea of pushing it forward and doing what we can to make it reality," VP of publishing Jeremy Dunham said. "All we have to do is check that box and it would be up and running in less than an hour all over the world."

Microsoft is committed to the idea, however, with uniting communities across PC, console and mobile a key part of its strategy for Xbox. For example, PlayStation is the only platform that won't be included in Minecraft's "Better Together" update.