Phil Spencer blasts Sony's Jim Ryan over claim that Minecraft on Xbox Live isn't safe for children

Just when you though Sony’s Jim Ryan couldn’t say something even more outrageous than before, he does. In an interview with Eurogamer, Ryan said that Sony won’t allow cross-play with Xbox Live and Nintendo Switch players because they have a solid reason against it. He added, “We have a contract with the people who go online with us, that we look after them and they are within the PlayStation curated universe…Exposing what in many cases are children to external influences we have no ability to manage or look after, it’s something we have to think about very carefully.” This is an absolutely ridiculous assertion because Sony’s own The Playroom was notorious for not acting quickly against users who exhibited domestic violence, pornography and weapons.

The best part is, everyone agrees that Nintendo is the company that truly protects children. They are a very family-oriented organization who have a lot of measures in place. If Nintendo considers Minecraft and Rocket League safe for their consumers, Sony can too. Well, Phil Spencer was asked this question in an interview with Giant Bomb and he blasted Ryan for his ridiculous, fallacious and petty statement. Spencer said, with noticeable anger in his tone:

“I would love for players on all platforms to stay connected…the fact that somebody would kind of make an assertion that somehow we’re not keeping Minecraft players safe…I found—not only from a Microsoft perspective—but from a game industry perspective…I don’t know why that has to become the dialogue. That doesn’t seem healthy for anyone…I found the whole discussion with the safety around our game and somehow we wouldn’t take that as a top priority is…We would never put Minecraft in a place where we felt we aren’t keeping our players safe.”

Sony’s Jim Ryan should stop right now. It seem as though Ryan has a hard time keeping up with history because he didn’t even acknowledge what happened with The Playroom. I’m glad Spencer responded because this is a very strong and damaging assertion by a Sony executive. Somehow Ryan thinks Minecraft and Rocket League aren’t safe but The Playroom—with its many issues—is? Hopefully someone at Sony will notice how much damage he’s done to their image in the past 24 hours and take action. It’s now getting truly bizarre and downright ugly.