I recently made a discovery. I was streaming "Mortal Kombat 11" on my Twitch channel when a viewer asked if we could play a few rounds together. I was of course happy to oblige, but there was one problem.

But then it hit me: NetherRealm Studios recently implemented cross-platform play in their latest bloody fighting game. This meant that I could set up a lobby and have a fistfight with my new online friends, despite the fact that we were on different hardware. It's seamless and simple, and I hope it becomes the standard when the PS5 and Xbox Series X are released this fall.

Cross-platform play has been slowly gaining traction over the past few years, and the explosion of "Fortnite" in early 2018 was definitely a big catalyst; Epic Games' hugely popular battle royale shooter was already on these platforms when it arrived PC, Xbox, Switch, and mobile players could play together, and the game's huge success even led Sony to reverse its infamous anti-Cross-Play stance in late 2018, allowing PS4 players to join the fight.

Fast forward to 2020, and the list of cross-play enabled games is considerably larger: titles like "Minecraft" and "Rocket League" have long been available for console and PC players to play together, "Call of Duty:. Modern Warfare" and "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" also joined the cross-play party in late 2019. This is not to mention Microsoft's entire first-party catalog, with titles like "Gears 5," "Sea of Thieves," and "Forza Horizon 4" having long since made cross-play, cross-save, and even Cross-buy has been possible.

"What [these games] have in common is that online multiplayer is an important, if not core element of the gameplay experience," says Lewis Ward, research director for games and VR/AR at IDC.

"The bottom line is that indie studios generally make more money from their games as their monthly pool of gamers increases. As the total number of gamers available to play against each other and with each other increases, a kind of network effect occurs. These studios have a vested interest in crossplay as a result.

By the time the PS5 and Xbox Series X are released later this year, cross-platform play should be the rule, not the exception. Just as you can send emails regardless of whether your friends are on iOS or Android, you can send emails and initiate Discord chats with PC and Mac users alike. Why would the game console work differently?

Ward is not convinced that cross-platform play will become the norm by the next generation, but he does see more and more major titles adopting cross-platform play on new consoles over the next few years.

"Cross-play requires ongoing resources, and platform holders have always been reluctant to effectively share information about their gamer base with the outside world. There are competitive and security issues as well. So I think the big AAAs will make it happen on next-gen consoles, but a lot of smaller games won't suddenly make cross-play a reality."

Indeed, we already know that the PS5 and Xbox Series X will offer tons of great features like ray tracing, insanely fast load times, and dazzling 8K visuals. But no matter what platform it is, if I can't play the games I want to play with the people I want to play them with, that's not a big deal to me. That's the next generation of consoles.