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Sony Is Blocking Fortnite Cross-Play Between PS4, Nintendo Switch Players (theverge.com)
Earlier today, Nintendo announced during its E3 press conference that Epic Games' Fortnite would be coming to the Switch console. Unfortunately, when Epic Games PR representative Nick Chester confirmed cross-play compatibility, the PS4 wasn't on the list. The Switch version of Fortnite will only support cross-play with Xbox One, PC, Mac, and mobile. The Verge reports: That aligns with past cross-play implementations between Xbox One, PS4, PC, and mobile, with Sony blocking other console platforms from playing with its own. You can cross-play between PS4, mobile, and PC. Unfortunately, this also suggests that PS4 players of Fortnite won't be able to log in to their Epic accounts on the Switch, meaning you won't be able to have any weekly progress carry over or gain access to any of your skins or emotes. This is because your Epic account is tied up with your PSN username in most cases. For instance, you can't log in to an Epic account tied to PSN on the Xbox One version of Fortnite, and it sounds like the same will be true for the Switch.
For those that don't want to dig into the details, here is the gist of it.
Fortnite uses an Epic Games account to login. If you've EVER logged into a Sony's PS4 with this account and touched Fortnite on it, this account become permanently locked out of both Microsoft's XBox One and Nintendo's Switch. The issue is not about cross play even, people are accepting that it wont happen. The issue is the fact that the outside Epic account becomes locked because of a deal Sony forced upon Epic games.
This of course became front and center in the spot light again today now that the Switch version of the game launched this morning, and a fuckton of people are pissed off that their in-game progress and paid content is entirely inaccessible on the Switch if they've ever touched the PS4 version.