It’s been a busy few days of Borderlands news. Since officially announcing the game at PAX East, Gearbox has also released the upscaled Borderlands Game of the Year Edition and the UHD upgrade for The Handsome Collection.
Gearbox has also advised that additional announcements and information about Borderlands 3 will be forthcoming on April 3. Included in that information will be the release date, Randy Pitchford confirmed.
Finally, it’s been speculated that the release date will be September 13 and that on PC, Borderlands 3 will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store. This comes from now deleted tweets posted by the official Borderlands account.
Pitchford has partially addressed the Epic Games Store issue in a series of tweets (below), stating that those decisions are controlled and handled by 2K, not Gearbox. It’s the latter part of this series of tweets that reveals something interesting. It also suggests that Borderlands 3 cross-platform play may be on the cards.
Borderlands 3 Cross-Platform Play
In his tweets, Pitchford begins by explaining that 2K “makes all decisions regarding price-points, territories, distribution and platform partnerships.” He also explains how he is fine with multiuple platforms, consoles and storefronts.
The third tweet in the series is where things get interesting. After explaining that 2K will control the release of Borderlands 3 he goes on to say;
For what it’s worth, 2K’s decisions aside, myself and the team at Gearbox have a very keen interest in cross-platform play. We believe multi-platform support is a pre-requisite and Epic’s leadership with cross platform support is helpful to our interests there
This by itself is not a confirmation of cross-platform play being included in Borderlands 3, but it suggests that Gearbox has, at least, considered including it. The issue of cross-platform play is totally unrelated to the publishing of the title.
For Pitchford to offer up this information without prompting suggests that there’s something deeper there.
Cross-platform play has become more ubiquitous in recent years and Sony has finally acquiesced and begun allowing cross-platform play with both Nintendo and Xbox. Switch and Xbox One players have been able to take advantage of cross-platform play for some time, but it was only in September 2018 that PS4 players could join in on the fun.
It was the success of Epic Games’ Fortnite that put enough pressure on Sony to open up the pipeline. Since then, Rocket League cross-platform play has been fully opened up with more games planned every day.
If Borderlands 3 supported cross-platform play it would certainly be one of the biggest new releases to do so. It would also be a perfect fit for cross-platform play. As a co-op looter-shooter, Borderlands 3 is built around playing with other people. Opening up that pool of players to multiple platforms will make connecting with others even easier.
Nothing has been announced at this stage, however, with additional information coming soon, we’ll let you know if cross-platform play is included.
For what it’s worth, 2K’s decisions aside, myself and the team at Gearbox have a very keen interest in cross-platform play. We believe multi-platform support is a pre-requisite and Epic’s leadership with cross platform support is helpful to our interests there. 3/3
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) April 1, 2019
