The issue of Cross-Play in Warframe

The issue of cross-play in Warframe came up via a fan question during one of the regular Warframe developer streams. Creative director Steve Sinclair tackled the question head-on, noting that while the team would love it to happen eventually, and that discussions take place, that’s as far as it can go for now. Frankly, the issues are structural.

Sinclair notes that Warframe has been around longer than the other games we mentioned already, and that contracts and negotiations were much different. He followed that up with technical hurdles preventing Warframe from simply throwing the cross-play switch as well. For one, Warframe is constantly updating, and often significantly changing with new ways to play, new game modes, and more. Fortuna, for example, added an open world component to the game and hasn’t even come to the Nintendo Switch version yet.

For cross-play to work in Warframe, Digital Extremes would have to achieve platform parity, which is currently not feasible. Updates will often come to PC before they hit consoles, and as is the case with Fortuna, the Nintendo Switch may have its own delays as well. That said, Sinclair also alluded to the possibility of sharing between platforms. While playing across all platforms is too much for now, what could come are progress or item-sharing capabilities. Digital Extremes has already laid out its 2019 roadmap in its entirely though, and cross-play features are not a part of it.