BioWare is continuing its efforts to answer as many questions as possible from excited fans of Anthem. All day Sunday Anthem executive producer Mark Darrah ran an "Ask Me Almost Anything About Anthem" question and answer session on Twitter, providing several exciting and interesting details that would otherwise have slipped through the cracks during E3. One answer of particular interest has to do with BioWare's thinking with regards to cross-play and cross-platform saves.
As expected, Darrah makes clear that BioWare has no plans to implement cross-play in Anthem. He doesn't clarify why that is, whether it be due to platform balance disparity or technical obstacles, but there doesn't seem to be any room for reconsideration at this point. Relatively few games have managed cross-play effectively, beyond Microsoft who has a very specific ability to provide such a service.
Moving on to cross-platform saves, Darrah's answer was much less finalized. To be clear, he does not state that Anthem in its current state supports cross-platform saves or that it will in the future. However, he does say, "I am looking into cross platform saves as we speak." This implies that BioWare is considering the feature, but has not reached a conclusion as to whether it will be able to implement it. And that's if Anthem's even capable of supporting it in the first place.
Despite the likelihood that cross-platform saves is an impossibility, it's very refreshing to hear an online multiplatform game like Anthem at the very least taking the feature seriously. It's funny how in 2018 the divide?between platforms can feel both narrower and wider than ever. Even just the effort can be seen as more progress than fans are used to.
The other half of the equation is that BioWare is going to an impressive effort to establish a communication line between the community and itself so early. Anthem is still seven?or eight months?out, but BioWare's willing to share what it's able. And its efforts will help build healthy expectations, while also serving to build excitement for the game. It may be some time before fans get to see more of Anthem, so BioWare's doing as much as it can now to ensure fans know what the team's focuses are moving towards launch.
Anthem releases on February 22, 2019, for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.