A few days ago, Microsoft publicly opened to the possibility of cross-network gameplay between Xbox One and other consoles. Today, Eurogamer asked Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida if the house of PlayStation would be willing to take up the rival on that invitation.

Yoshida's answer wasn't either a definite yes or a firm denial

"Since PC is an open platform, it's much more straightforward, but connecting to different close networks is much more complicated, so we have to work with developers and publishers to understand what it is that they are trying to accomplish, and we have to look at the technical aspect...

The technical aspect could be the easiest, but we also have to look at the policy issues and the business issues as well, so we'll work with publishers and developers."

When asked about the relevant precedent, Final Fantasy XI, Yoshida confirmed, but mentioned that it was difficult, encouraging to ask Yoichi Wada (who was Square Enix's President at that time) what it was like.

Personally, I'm rather surprised to see people actually expecting more than vague, conservative answers on this for the moment. Microsoft's invitation was launched only three days ago, while executives like Shuhei Yoshida were at Game Developers Conference. This kind of issue is not something on which they can decide independently, and will certainly require quite a bit of investigation and discussion among Sony's higher echelons.

An actual response might come, but I wouldn't realistically expect it for a while.