EA Crossplay Arrives, Starting with Need for Speed Heat

June 9, 2020

Electronic Arts and Need for Speed developers Critereon have today announced that an EA Crossplay range will be made available for gamers that want to play with friends on different platforms, starting with 2019’s open-world racing game Need for Speed Heat.

Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Windows via Steam or Origin players will all be able to play together using the new EA Crossplay system, with a new EA Friends tab being added to the party menu to see which of your friends from other platforms are online.

EA Crossplay

Rocket Chainsaw reviewed Need for Speed Heat at launch, giving it 3.5 stars, calling it, “another typical instalment to the franchise. It offers some new features such as controlling the time of day and having different events during the day and at night, but the story of a corrupt cop chasing down illegal street racers is cliché and quite frankly, dry.” Perhaps by opening up access to friends and new players from other platforms, Need for Speed Heat can now become a more community oriented game.

Critereon also announced that this Need for Speed Heat update is the last for the game, as they shift to working on a new Need for Speed game for the next generation of consoles. EA is hosting its summer game showcase on June 19 where we expect to hear more about future EA Crossplay titles. With Need for Speed Heat being the first, we can only assume EA’s sports range and other multiplayer games will soon follow suit. If games like FIFA and Madden or even Battlefield can have crossplay support, friends will no longer have to worry about which platform their mate is buying the game on.

Make sure to check back with Rocket Chainsaw for all the latest gaming news over the coming months as we report on the EA summer game showcase, as well as the PlayStation 5 Games Showcase this Friday, and the Xbox 20/20 event in july.