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Apex Legends cross-platform support: Everything we know

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Since launch, Apex Legends players have been begging for cross-platform play across Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Despite being announced as a key feature when the game released, Apex Legends still doesn’t have a full crossplay feature. That said, it’s currently running a cross-platform beta, allowing players on Origin, Xbox One, and PS4 to team up in play. Before the feature launches fully — hopefully later this year — here’s everything we know about Apex Legends cross-platform support.

Further reading

Is Apex Legends cross-platform?

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Apex Legends is currently in a cross-platform beta, which started on October 6 with the season 6 Aftermarket Collection Event. The trial run is meant to gather player data and work out bugs before the crossplay system, hopefully, launches later this year. The system in Apex Legends is simple: Players can team up with others on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 regardless of the platform they’re on. The key word here is “can.”

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If you’re leading a party, you can invite players from other platforms to join your party. Crossplay is enabled by default, so all you need to do is add your teammate as a friend and invite them to your party. If your party consists of only players on consoles, you’ll be placed into a match with other console players. If, however, your party has a least one player on PC, your entire party will be placed in a PC match.

The same is true for matchmaking. Cross-platform matchmaking is turned on by default, but PC players and console players are placed into separate queues. In the crossplay announcement, Respawn justified this restriction, saying “We want to ensure that keyboard and mouse PC players are not being matched against console players, for reasons that should be obvious.”

You can disengage crossplay from the Settings menu if you’d prefer to remain on the same platform, even though Respawn discourages this. When you disable crossplay, you’ll only queue with players on your same platform; this means you will be given a smaller selection of potential opponents given that enabled crossplay is the default.

If you’d like, you can also take advantage of the in-game voice chat with cross-platform participants.

Is there cross-progression in Apex Legends?

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Currently, crossplay beta is available for Apex Legends, but this feature doesn’t have cross-progression— which could noticeably affect your game experience. Respawn labels cross-progression as a “valuable feature.” They say that they’ll revisit this possible feature when Apex Legends launches on Steam later this year. Right now, there really isn’t consistent play across various platforms. So, if you were to start a game on one device and then switch to a different platform, your character progress, unlocks, in-game currency, and more would be lost. You’d start at the beginning on the new device.  

We’re hopeful that cross-progression will become available soon, but it’s highly likely that this feature won’t work for everything. As we’ve seen displayed by Fortnite and Dauntless, in-game currency isn’t likely transferable across all Apex Legends platforms. This form of currency often functions primarily in its own specific digital marketplace. For instance, if you’re collecting V-Bucks on Fortnite, you’ll only be able to use that currency on the platform where you’ve bought them. Alternatively, if you used PSN to buy the currency, you can only use it then on PS4.

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Jacob Roach
Lead Reporter, PC Hardware
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
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