1 - I hear this a lot...is this only due to FF or is this something MS has come out and said no cross play period?
The problem is, it's entirely at Microsoft's whim, and they can veto after the fact. It sounds like you basically give your PlayStation game to the MS rep, and if it has touchpad integration, hopefully he'll say, "Yeah, that's stupid; do whatever you want." The problem is, if it's Minority Report controls for your RTS, he may say, "This is amazing; you may never speak of it again." If he does, you can either disable the feature on PlayStation, or kiss all of the money you spent on XBox development goodbye. Totally your call there, obviously. No pressure either way; do what you think is best for you.
As to why MS limit cross-platform play at all, I think it goes back to when they were the only ones charging for multiplayer. They had their users convinced they were paying for something magically good, so if their users were able to play directly with other users, and see that their games in fact worked equally well, and for free, then Microsoft's users might start
paying attention to the details, which is the
last thing Microsoft need, obviously.
2 - It may have spread up the process, but only a crazy person would believe there would never be a street fighter 5
We don't know the financial details. We know Sony are assisting with development, and we know Ono had said multiple times in the past that Capcom didn't have the money to fund the project. They couldn't even afford to do a Gen8 port of Ultra; and in fact, Sony are doing the PS4 port entirely themselves.
Almost assuredly, actually.
Anyhow the news about SF5 is awesome and shit at the same time. SF is my all time favorite franchise and I can't wait for it. That said it sucks that the three people I like to play SF with have XB1. So my cock is too big for their mouth or something like that...
It does suck for your friends, and if they don't want to get on board with PS4 or PC, I guess it sorta sucks for you too. But at the same time, everyone who
is playing Street Fighter can face off against every other player in the world. Fighters without borders.
Also, it's still fairly early in the generation. There are millions of XBone owners in the wild, but that's really not all that many in the grand scheme of things. Hell, even though there are already way more PS4s, there really aren't that many PS4s in play either. The vast majority of the people buying this generation haven't even started thinking about buying yet. Since working on a single platform is better for the developer in every way, if there's already a clear market leader, and their hardware is more powerful and easier to code, then now is actually the
perfect time to choose a side.
By choosing sides now, Ono sends a clear message to his fans about where they'll find his games this generation. Now you know. Sucks if you've already chosen the wrong side, but 90% of users
haven't chosen yet, and of those who have, the vast majority have gone PlayStation, just like Ono. Now that Street Fighter fans know where the action is, some of them will say, "I'll buy the Turbo version with DLC in six months because fuck Sony, and I'll get it used* because fuck Ono. *
" Others will say, "Perfect, it was gonna be better on PS4 anyway, and now it'll be exclusive-quality on top of that." I expect the latter group to be considerably larger than the former.
Again, it sucks for your friends, but those are the perils of being an early adopter in the tech wars. Sucked for Betamax and HD-DVD users too. Ono gave us a year to choose sides, and then he threw in with the winner. The fact that Sony happened to be the consumer choice works out particularly well, since they have way better hardware, and they pretty much let Ono do whatever he wants, like implement cross-platform play.
