Fortnite has removed cross-play with Xbox One, PS4 from the Nintendo Switch

Sometime last year, Epic Games worked with Sony and Microsoft to implement the iconic cross-platform play. Fortnite became one of the rare instances of games having cross-platform play, while its competitors such as PUBG and other online games did not have it.

Cross-play soon included all platforms that Fortnite was available in, which are PC, Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch and Mobile. Players will not play cross-platform by default though, as they will need to enable it from their settings in order to do so.

As of patch v8.10, Epic has changed the formula for cross-platform play. The Nintendo Switch will no longer be allowed to play against players on PC, Xbox One and PS4. Account merging will still be there. Now PS4 and Xbox One players have been lumped into one pool for cross-platform play and Nintendo Switch and mobile users will be a separate pool.

PS4, Xbox One and PC had the advantage of having 60fps framerates and better graphics settings. This felt like an unfair advantage to those console players as Nintendo Switch could only go to a maximum of 30 fps. Players reported this unfair advantage and it prompted Epic to take action.

Patch v8.10 features a whole lot of new skins, challenges, new LTMs and new events. The decision for changing the cross-play pool has given a much fairer advantage to players. How fair is it to pool mobile players with Switch players though? Unless players have a mobile controller or a high-end mobile, the mobile player could be at a disadvantage.

Regardless of how much effort Epic Games puts into Fortnite and despite all of its achievements to bring the community closer together, there is not much they can do about hardware limitations. For now, their efforts to balance the player pools based on hardware limitations is the best they can do.