Gamer's Outpost LLC

by Dave Thier via Forbes

Want to play your PS4 games on the Nintendo Switch? Sony wants to know if you’re interested, at the very least. The company recently sent out a survey primarily focused on its remote play feature, which allows you to use your own PS4 as a remote server to play games on PCs and smartphones. Among other things, the survey asked whether people would be interested in remote play coming to Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, or a “generic handheld device”. Which is an interesting notion.

The survey comes to us from Reddit user YouRedditHereFirst, and also wonders about a slim dualshock designed for portable play. It’s worth noting that video game companies—and other companies—test the waters with surveys all the time, and this in no way means such a feature is coming. But it does mean that the idea is at least a passing notion, and an enthusiastic response could lead to some more internal discussions.

Honestly, aside from the mild cognitive dissonance and presumed technical difficulties, it’s easy to see how this is a win/win from a business perspective. The reason is simple: Remote Play still requires you to own a PS4 (or presumably a PS5, later), and so it doesn’t cut into sales at all. It does expand functionality for both the PS4 and the Switch in a consumer-friendly way, however.

It’s hard to see just what functionality playing these on an Xbox One would add, but one could imagine you’re at a friend’s house who only has an Xbox One and you want to show them Bloodborne, or something. As far as a “generic handheld device”, it’s always possible that Sony would want to consider a new piece of hardware, but that would be a whole different conversation.

The Switch here is what I’m most interested in, because there’s also been chatter about the idea that the Switch could be used as an Xcloud device, something that’s a little easier for me to imagine given Sony and Microsoft’s recent collaboration. But regardless, the idea is the same: the Switch is already a perfect second console to pair with your Xbox or Sony products, and a ton of Switch owners already own a beefier machine. Helping them play better together seems like it would make a lot of people happy without ceding any ground.

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