With the prosperity of the gaming industry, I believe you have higher and higher requirements for gaming devices, so now there are more devices available on the market, such as PC, mobile phones, Switch and Xbox series game consoles. Although this greatly meets your device needs, it also brings another problem: what should you do when you want to play cross-platform games?
In order to attract more players, many large games have been working hard to develop cross-platform play in recent years to give themselves more advantages, especially those MMORPGs. But to your surprise, as a MMORPG that has been running for more than ten years, Elder Scrolls Online has not launched cross-platform play as of 2024, but it is expected that this situation may change in 2025.
ESO Officially Landed On Xbox Game Pass
Xbox Game Pass is actually a subscription service that was launched on June 1, 2017. It includes a rotating library of games, and as long as you have an active subscription, you can always access your existing games through video game consoles, Microsoft Windows, Android, iOS, etc., and even provide discounts on DLC for some games.
After Elder Scrolls Online landed on Xbox Game Pass, you might think that you will be able to share ESO Gold held by the same game account on most of your devices, but the fact is that this is limited to Xbox consoles. Although PC players can currently play ESO through Xbox Cloud Gaming of Game Pass, it is also limited to PC and cannot be shared across platforms.
Elder Scrolls Online Gameplay
Although cross-platform play has many benefits, it is may not suitable for all gameplay, so we will analyze it for you based on this. First of all, ESO was released in 2014 and has received unanimous praise from many game critics and players since its release, and even won British Academy Games Award and many award nominations in this decade.
The game is set on the continent of Tamriel. The gameplay is mostly non-linear, with a mixture of quests, random events and free exploration, which can provide enough playable content for players of different skill levels, such as:
- Character creation: You can start creating your first character at the beginning of the game, and then you can choose a race for the character, and the choice of race will also determine the character’s alliance, class, gender, appearance, voice and name.
- High degree of freedom of exploration: The continent of Tamriel provides you with multiple quests and free battles to ensure your freedom of exploration.
- Combat system: ESO’s combat system brings you a richer combat experience by effectively combining strikes, spells and abilities.
- Team content: You can get more ESO Gold by teaming up with other players to complete more challenging tasks and defeat more powerful enemies.
- Grand open world: As the main world of the game, Tamriel has many locations, ranging from tropical islands to snow-capped mountains, and the scenery is also very good.
- Diverse content: No matter what your skill level is, whether you like to play PVE or PVP mode, ESO can satisfy you.
Elder Scrolls Online Cross-Platform Rules
The game still does not bring official cross-platform play to this day. Although it is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, and there are some exceptions such as Xbox consoles only, players from different platforms cannot interact with each other whether exploring Tamriel, fighting powerful creatures or completing quests.
However, it is worth noting that Elder Scrolls Online supports cross-generation games, which means that you can play ESO both on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, and the same is true for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
Will ESO Usher In Cross-Platform Play In 2025?
2024 is the tenth anniversary of Elder Scrolls Online. The game held a related celebration event, and the development team announced in the second half of 2024 that it will make several major changes to the game starting in 2025, such as a new season system and new DLC. So you are likely to hope to hear ESO cross-platform news in the second half of this year.
But given the size of the game world and the sheer number of players, it might be too much of a stretch to bring more extensive cross-platform play to ESO than it already has, and even trickier is the political stance of the major platform owners in the market.
Fortunately, while your hopes for cross-platform play in Elder Scrolls Online will be dashed for a long time, the game is gradually adding more content to play. For example, Update 45, and the new DLC Fallen Banners, which was launched not long ago on March 10, will also allow you to explore two new dungeons called Lep Seclusa and Exiled Redoubt.
Or if you’re an old ESO player, you should know that Cyrodiil, the main battlefield of PVP mode, has been experiencing server overload issues, and it is expected that the relevant bugs will also be resolved through Cyrodiil Champions test, which will end on March 31.
In short, although ESO currently does not offer cross-platform play, its future performance should be more than enough to make up for this, so if you want to experience the game for a long time, you might as well use your favorite device with peace of mind!