This is how I've been thinking of it myself. If it's at all possible, surely it's something like this:
- Each device as a type keyed to their client ID (or whatever it would be called)
- Two clients then match:
- Type A (say, PS5) matches with Type A (say, XSX) -> Launch Activity A
- Type A (say, XSX) matches with Type B (say, PS4) -> Launch Activity B
- Type A (say, PS5) matches with Type C (say, high-end mobile) -> Launch Activity C
- The relevant Activity loads
Now the differences between A-C could be more or less extreme, and not just graphical fidelity/assets. The animation cycles are changed, or it smooths over a reduced total number for any given action. Etc.
Again, I'm not a developer of any description, and maybe this would be insane to pull off, but I'm struggling to see why, from my untutored perspective. Perhaps the gameplay differences would be felt to be too severe, and thus it would be a bad decision to make the user experience gameplay without parity across activities. But that wouldn't be a technical hindrance, just a design/UX hindrance.
My Part 2 thoughts on all this regard
controls.
I have seen countless posts here, on Twitter, on Reddit, on another forum, all assume that mobile cross play means reduced control scheme. We have two good reasons to think that:
- The current mobile game, and others similar, with their dumbed down touchscreen control set
- The open test, with its reduced control options
However, for a couple reasons, I think this isn't good evidence.
The first thing is that the roadmap itself, and the trailer, at no point suggested mobile cross-play involved touchscreen controls. I do think the base game on mobile will still be touchscreen compatible – a must in this day and age – but all signs point towards
controller only for cross-play with consoles. Now, that may or may not be a wise decision in terms of trying to make this new experience where anyone can play anyone (how many people have mobile controllers, or would get some, or would not rather use a console/PC at that point?). But wisdom isn't something Konami have in spades.
The second thing is that though the performance test lacked some controls, it still had several other legacy controls. E.g., Super Cancel was both observable in-play when triggered and in the menu. As were the trick controls. As were height modifiers on crosses. Etc. Why would you remove second-man press or triggering player runs on account of it not being scaleable to mobile, but then also include Super Cancel, the full array of tricks, and height modifiers on crosses (just to name a few things)?
So: why were the controls incomplete in that test? Who the fuck knows, frankly. But I really
don't think the answer is: because it has to be compatible with mobile. It is
already incompatible with mobile touchscreen input. With a controller, a mobile user can do more or less anything a console user can do, at least in terms of input (not thinking about the mobile processing power and what it can compute/process/output).
In short, I don't think we can conclude too much about controls yet. It's feasible there will be changes to the control scheme in general (finesse tied to sensitive input on the LS; defending made "tactical"). But there's not much more to say.
Edit: couple of typos!