Guilty Gear Strive Crossplay Beta is Now Live

Guilty Gear Strive has been one of the most accessible fighting games in recent memory. Not only was it more beginner-friendly than its predecessors, but it also fostered a lot of goodwill from the fighting game community by releasing with rollback netcode a year and a half into the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s no surprise that it is by and far the best-selling entry in the series either as it crossed over one million sales in August. Now, it has begun taking a new step towards being more open and available.

Although crossplay was first announced as a plan on their season 2 roadmap back in March at the ArcRevo 2021 tournament, everybody now has the chance to try out the free cross-platform network open beta test. This beta will last until the end of October 16^th and is available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Steam. All base and DLC characters will be available, including Bridget, who was revealed as the first season 2 character at EVO 2022. It’s a separate application to allow even those who do not own Guilty Gear Strive the chance to participate.

While a strong netcode can do a lot to maintain an online community and at this point attract people as well, crossplay is the next biggest feature that many want for their favorite series. Fighting games are still quite niche and suffer from sharp player drop-offs soon after being released. Crossplay can possibly mitigate some of this or at least help retain the community for longer by bringing all players on every platform together. Beyond making it easier to play with friends, it also increases the chances that players of all skill levels can find more suitable opponents.

A specific date has yet to be provided for when the crossplay update will go live for the main game. The roadmap we saw at EVO 2022 only provided a timeframe that it would come after the beta test within the Fall season. If that wasn’t enough good news for the community, we learned last month at the Xbox Tokyo Game Show Presentation that Guilty Gear Strive will finally be coming to Xbox consoles and be available through Xbox Game Pass starting in Spring 2023. Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator and Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 will also be receiving a rollback netcode update as well. It’s a great time to be a fan of the series.