Question...

Are PS4 players able to play online with PC players? My brother & I would like to play online together but unsure if we're able to mesh between the two.

No, because PC has mouse and keyboard, which was the official reason stated by Blizzard awhile ago for not having cross platform play.

@mike: I always wonder about that. Is there just no way to force a mouse cursor to move at matching speeds with analog sticks? There have to be enough multi-platform multiplayer games to benefit from the shared userbase that someone would be working to solve this. Consoles have USB now and they've already made weird little keyboards for them. Why not a mouse-like peripheral for shooters and the like?

@bocckob: Speaking of which:

https://www.polygon.com/2017/2/3/14502282/overwatch-mouse-and-keyboard-ps4-xbox

Blizzard is firmly against the use of third party mouse and keyboard peripherals for consoles because they aren't fair.

“The Overwatch team objects to the use of mouse and keyboard on console,” Kaplan wrote. “We have contacted both first-party console manufacturers and expressed our concern about the use of mouse and keyboard and input conversion devices.”

Ahhhh... I see.

Totally makes sense.

Thanks y'all!!!!

@mike: I dunno, it seems like if the tech already exists, then it's just a matter of whether a company wants to invest resources in balancing it up and claiming lack of "fairness" feels like a cop-out. You can already play with a controller on PC if you want and if Blizzard wants to talk fairness, then getting one-shotted by a Hanzo jumping in and out of indestructible cover feels way more unfair than our respective peripherals.

Knowing absolutely nothing about networking, control calibration, or anything associated with game development, I'm betting lack of cross-platform play is tied up in a lot more money stuff than simply "mice and controllers can't mix".

That's a lame excuse to me. Implement it and have an option to turn cross play on or off in the settings. People that want it can do it and those that don't won't have to. Just like Rocket League does it.

It's not that simple with Overwatch though. Blizzard specifically balances the game differently between console and PC. They will implement nerfs or buffs on one platform but not the other, while many balance changes are still universal, because of the issues that come up with using a gamepad rather than a mouse and keyboard. An example a while back was Torbjorn's turrets got nerfed on console to have slower target acquistion (could be wrong on the exact nerf) because it once a player sees a turret it takes longer for the console player to be able to get their crosshair on to it.

This would mean Blizzard would either have to make things worse for one input type by ignoring their specific issues and focus on the other, balance both at the same time which would lead to nerfs being fair under pads but not under mouse and keyboard, or have different balances for the those with cross play on or off which may be difficult logistically and cause inconsistency between the two while on the same platform.

@zella: Honestly, I always forget they make changes to some things that they don't on the other platforms, because they usually seem like pointless changes to me. Like the Torbjorn thing. I never had any issue with it and that change felt unnecessary to me, so I hadn't really thought of that problem when I posted.

Still seems like they could do something, though. Make it a separate thing you can do in the arcade maybe, but not changing anything in the other modes. Either way, cross platform play is not a thing that's needed in Overwatch, so they don't really have any reason/motivation to try and figure something out. At least not as long as each platform's player base is holding strong.