Ever since Gears of War 5 was announced at E3 this past year, fans of the iconic shooter franchise have been pining for more news about the game. One area where there’s been constant speculation and hype is the multiplayer arenas within the video game. Players have wondered whether the two platforms, PC and Xbox One, will have cross-platform support. This is a desired feature because it would allow the playerbase to be more unified, and friends on different platforms would have an easy time playing together.
Multiplayer Director for the game,Ryan Cleven , had the following to say on the topic: “We are happy to confirm that Gears 5 will feature cross-platform play between Xbox One and Windows 10 PC for Versus Multiplayer. Cross-platform play also extends across the other Gears 5 modes to provide a great over-the-top three-player experience in Escape, an epic five-player Horde session, or three-player Campaign co-op.” We’ve already seen this feature used in the fourth mainline game with Campaign, Versus and Horde modes, so it’s great to see support for equal matchmaking getting expanded.
The Coalition has plenty of experience working with the franchise, so don’t be too concerned about this creating imbalance in the multiplayer. The developer was able to pull it off just fine with Gears of War 4, so there’s no reason they wouldn’t be able to here either. And with Microsoft backing the effort, technical issues shouldn’t be too much of a problem either.
And don’t worry if you’re on console and are concerned about being matched against those gamers using a mouse and keyboard, the matchmaking will have an opt-out, according to Cleven, “For the launch of Gears 5, Xbox players will be able to opt-out of matchmaking against PC players for ranked matches.”
Gears 5 is due on September 10 on Xbox One and PC, if you want to play early though, there is a tech test for a sliver of the game happening over the next couple of weekends. And if you’re curious, the game will have free DLC for all of its new maps.
