Exoprimal Now Offers Crossplay with a Major Hurdle

Exoprimal's crossplay only supports matchmaking, not playing with friends across platforms.

Capcom is making efforts to attract a wide range of players to its dinosaur shooter game, Exoprimal. The game is available on various platforms such as Steam, Game Pass, Xbox, and PlayStation, and offers a combination of player versus environment (PvE) and player versus player (PvP) modes. Based on feedback received during the beta test, Capcom decided to include a PvE-only mode. Additionally, Capcom aims to enable players to compete with each other across different platforms through crossplay. However, there is a significant feature missing from Exoprimal's crossplay functionality.

Although players on PC and consoles can compete to eliminate dinosaurs, they are unable to form parties with each other. Furthermore, if you are playing Exoprimal on Steam, you cannot team up with friends who are playing on PC Game Pass, even though both of you are using a PC.

Let's delve into the slightly perplexing crossplay setup of Exoprimal.

In a tweet on July 7th, Capcom stated that "On day one, Exoprimal will support cross-platform matchmaking, but party creation will be specific to each platform ecosystem."

Unfortunately, Steam operates within its own ecosystem, while PC Game Pass is part of the Xbox ecosystem. PC Game Pass players can form parties with Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S players using Xbox Live. However, PC Game Pass players and Steam players cannot join forces.

As the above tweet indicates, Exoprimal's crossplay system currently only facilitates matchmaking. This means that if you are playing on Steam, you might find yourself competing against a player on a PlayStation or Xbox console. Party creation is limited to how each individual platform manages its friend systems and invitations. Consequently, it is impossible to play with friends on a different platform unless you both enter matchmaking together and happen to get extremely lucky.

This limitation is disappointing, especially considering that Exoprimal requires players to create a Capcom ID to play online. It would be reasonable to expect this service to integrate with each platform's friend system, allowing players to find their dino-shooting buddies regardless of the system they are using.

Capcom's tweet does mention that there is no party creation crossplay "on day one," so there is hope that this option will be added shortly after the game's launch.