Need For Speed Heat Becomes The First EA Game To Get Cross-Play

Need for Speed Heat is getting cross-play starting June 9, making it the first EA game to let people from different platforms finally play together.

The feature is getting added in the game’s final update, due out tomorrow. Once it’s live, players will be able to opt into cross-play from the game’s settings and race against whoever whether they’re on PS4, Xbox One, or PC. It’ll also be possible to search for people you know on other platforms using the EA Friends tab, as long as they’ve also opted into cross-play.

Cross-play has been slowly getting added to more and more games ever since Epic Games announced Fortnite would be getting it back in 2018. Originally Sony was a holdout, not allowing cross-play on the PS4 versions of games like Minecraft and Rocket League, but recently those barriers started breaking down as well.

At the same time, there are still lots of games that don’t support cross-play, chief among them EA’s other multiplayer games like FIFA and Madden NFL. It’s not clear if Need for Speed getting cross-play means it might finally come to those series as well.

EA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Criterion Games said in a blog post that the update adding cross-play to Need for Speed Heat will be the game’s last, as the studio pivots to focusing entirely on developing the next Need for Speed game.