Gears of War 4 players on Xbox One and Windows 10 will soon be able to jump into ranked play together with cross-play. After enabling cross-play on the Social Quickplay playlist earlier this year, Gears developer The Coalition has announced (via OnMSFT) plans to bring the feature to ranked play later this year.
According to The Coalition, the move is in response to a shortage of players in ranked play on Windows 10:
When we released Crossplay support in Social, our players on Windows 10 flocked to the playlist to play in the broadest playerbase possible. Since that time, Windows 10 players have found it increasingly difficult to find matches in Core and Competitive, so we've been working on solutions as quickly as possible to provide an improved experience on the platform.
The change isn't rolling out, immediately, however. While The Coalition previously noted that it hadn't seen much of a competitive advantage for either platform in its cross-play tests, the developer still wants to make sure that anyone playing on a console has the option to opt out of cross-play for ranked matches. When the feature rolls out later this year, Xbox One players will have access to a toggle to turn cross-play off for ranked play. Social, competitive warm up and special events will remain cross-play no matter what, however.
