Both Sony and Microsoft are competing neck-a-neck for the world’s console money. One of their strategies includes groups of gaming friends all buying the same console to game together on the same platform. To ensure that happens, they have made it incredibly difficult to foster a cross-platform ecosystem.
Choosing between an Xbox or PlayStation became much more than deciding which one you like better. You have to please your whole gaming circle or you’ll end up finding new friends to play with. Even though this creates a lot of chaos and breaks friendship groups apart, neither Sony nor Microsoft would shed a tear. However, now there are solutions for adding friends across different platforms despite the extent these platforms go to make that difficult. Let’s find out how to add Xbox friends on Ps5.
Can You Add Xbox Friends on PS5
Many cross-platform games now allow people with an Xbox, Ps5, and even a PC to play together in harmony. Games like Fortnight made crossplay essential, and now it’s become a trend in the gaming universe. Many games offer some level of crossplay support for friends across different platforms.
This has made gaming more fun because now you have the added layer of competing for your platform. Are Xbox players better at a game, or are Ps5 players better? Or do the PC players wipe the floor with them both? Now you can play together and find out.
Adding friends while playing cross-platform is different for every game. Games that offer complete cross-play support make it very easy to add friends across different platforms. You can easily add your Xbox friends to your Ps5 while playing these games. How it’s done in each game is a little different, so let’s take a look at the most popular crossplay games.
Fortnite
Fortnight is a battle-royal style survival game where one among a hundred players is the last one standing. It’s uber-popular with well over four hundred million players. To add Xbox, Switch, or even PC players to a game of Fortnight is pretty easy and intuitive. It takes no extra steps than adding a friend from the same platform. The first thing you’ll have to do is open up the game and open the options menu. Once in the options menu, you should easily be able to find the add friends option. There you’ll find several methods to add friends. You can add a friend by searching their display name and sending them a friend request once you find their ID.
If you don’t know your friend’s display name, you can ask them to text it to you so you spell it correctly. Alternatively, if you played with someone and enjoyed it, then you can find them in the recent player’s tab. It doesn’t matter what platform they use to play; you can simply add them without issue. There is also a suggested friends tab full of suggested players you’ve played with or who share the same skill level. Now whenever you play fortnight, you will have no trouble adding your Xbox friends to your Ps5.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a really popular game with at least over ten million players worldwide. The game was an instant hit, with over ten billion matches played in the first ten days. The game is loved equally by players of all platforms. If you want all your Xbox friends to join you on the battlefield, you must take a few extra steps. You must rely on your Activision account to add friends from different platforms. Your friends will also need to have their own Activision accounts.
If you already use your Activision account to log in and play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 online, you’ve already linked your Activision account to your Ps5 and done half the work. If not, you need to link your Activision account to your Ps5 and ensure all your Xbox friends have also linked their Activision accounts to their Xboxes. Once that is done, it’s smooth sailing from here on out. Now all you have to do is open the social page once you’ve loaded the game. On the social page, you’ll see a tab labeled Friends, where you can see the total number of PlayStation Network friends and your Activision Friends. You need to click on Activision friends, and then to add more friends, you’ll need to search for their Activision IDs. Ask your friend for their Activision ID so you can search for them and send them an invite.
All your crossplay data, including your game progression and friends, will be stored with Activision instead of your PlayStation. You’ll lose all your crossplay friends if you remove your Activision account and any progress achieved while engaged in crossplay.
Minecraft
Minecraft is a block-based survival game where you get resources from the land to make structures and machines. Its infinite replayability has made it incredibly popular. Minecraft supports crossplay, and you can invite Xbox friends or friends on any platform to play with you. Adding friends from other platforms in Minecraft is pretty straightforward like it is in Fortnight. This applies to the Minecraft Bedrock edition as well, which is available for console and PC users. This will only work if you and your friends are playing the Bedrock edition.
First of all, you need to load the game and open a new or existing world. Once there, you need to access the in-game pause menu. Once there, select the option marked “Invite to the game.” Once you click that, you will find a separate option called “Find cross-platform friends.” This is convenient and makes Minecraft one of the best cross-platform games. After clicking on that, you can find your friends by searching for their Minecraft gamer tag. Once found, you can send them an invite to become your friend. After they accept your invitation and if they are online, you should see them in online friends. Invite them to play with you in your world. If they accept, they should materialize in front of you soon.
Apex Legends
Apex Legends offers partial cross-platform support. It allows you to engage in cross-play, but it does not store your crossplay data. Think of it this way. You can add as many friends across different platforms as you like and play with them. However, any progression during those crossplay sessions is not saved. Achievements made during crossplay will not influence your ranking. That is because there are different advantages to each platform, and the game doesn’t want any one user to have an advantage over the other due to their platform in ranked play. Apex Predator rank is grouped by platform for this very reason. However, this should not stop you from playing with your Xbox friends on your Ps5.
To add friends from a different platform, first of all, you need to load the game and check your option settings to see if crossplay is enabled. If it’s not, then enable it before continuing. Now all you have to do is select the Friends options on the right of your screen. There you can click on find friends and type in their Gamertag. Have your friend text it to you to make sure you can spell it correctly. You can see what platform the different users are on based on the logo next to their names. Once you find your friend, simply send them an invite to be friends. After they accept it, you can play normally.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Seige
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege is a great tactical shooting game with large maps and many interesting gadgets. It puts a lot of focus on how players can cooperate during matches and destroy the world around them too. With most team games like this, crossplay is becoming more and more essential.
You can easily add cross-platform friends and even keep your crossplay data safe using a Ubisoft account. You must link a Ubisoft account with your Ps5 and ensure all your Xbox friends have also linked their consoles with their Ubisoft accounts. Similar to how you need an Activision account for crossplay in Modern Warfare 2. Once you have linked our account and enabled crossplay in the game settings, you can add friends across different platforms to your party. You should be able to see Ubisoft Connect right under Invite Friends when adding friends to a party.
Once you click Ubisoft Connect, all you have to do is search for their Xbox Gamertag. When you find them, you’ll be able to send them an invite to become your friend. If they accept and are online, you can invite them to your party and play all day! Remember, the Ps5 will not save any crossplay progress, but your Ubisoft account will. If you unlink your Unisoft account from your Ps5, you will lose all crossplay progression or cross-progression.
Need For Speed Heat
It’s finally time for EA games to join in on all the crossplay fun happening in video games. Need for Speed Heat is the first game to support crossplay, and hopefully, we will see more crossplay games to follow in the future, especially looking forward to the sports titles. In this game, like the others on this list, your Ps5 will not store any crossplay information like your friends or your progress. However, EA games will do that for you. So before you begin, you need to ensure your EA games account is linked to your PS5 and your Xbox friends also link their accounts as well. This way, you will be able to add friends through your EA games account.
To link your account to your PS5, you just need to log in to any game using your EA Games username and password. Then your account will automatically be linked to your Ps5. Now find the Find Player tab on the main menu or in-game pause menu and search for them using their EA name. Once you find them, you can add them by sending them a friend request or invite. After they accept it, you can race together when they are online.
Dauntless
Dauntless is a co-op RPG game where you can kill monsters. It’s fun but not as popular as it used to be initially. Dauntless does have crossplay support for both adding friends and keeping your crossplay progression safe. However, you’ll need to make sure you know your and your friend’s Epic Games Account name. Similar in some ways to how to add friends in Fortnight, you can add friends very simply, but you need to have this information.
Once you learn your friend’s Epic Games account name, you’re good to go. You can load up the game and go to the Social part of the menu. There you should go to Add Friends and search for the Epic Games name of your friend. You will not find them by typing their Xbox Gamertag; it has to be their Epic Games name. Once you type it in and search. You can send them an invite to become your friend. If they accept it, you can play together without problems. Now you can find out which platform is better for defeating monsters. Is it Xbox or PlayStation? Let the battle begin!
Call of Duty: Warzone
Call of Duty: Warzone is a battle-royal-style shooting game that’s part of the Call of Duty franchise. It’s popular with interesting mechanics. Players compete to survive on a continuously shrinking map to be the last one standing. It makes sense you’d want to add your friends to up the chances of one of you winning. The game also has different modes.
To add crossplay friends and save crossplay progression, you must rely on a third party because your PlayStation wants nothing to do with cross-platform users.
Similar to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, in Warzone, you will also have to link your Activision account to your Ps5 and ensure that your Xbox friends have done the same. Once that is done, you need to visit the main menu and make sure that crossplay is enabled. After that is accounted for, you can head on over to the social tab and select the option that says Add Freinds. Now you need to search for your friend’s Activision ID. This is not their display name, not their Xbox name, or any other name, but the Activision ID associated with their Activision account. Once you have added the correct ID, you should see their profile and be able to send them a friend invite. After that, you can add them to a match like your other PlayStation friends, given they accept the request and are online.
MultiVersus
MultiVersus is a cool platform fighter game with many iconic characters from the Warner Bros multiverse. If you ever wanted to see who’d win between Batman and Shaggy or Taz and Denarys, this is a hilarious game where you can see that through. To add friends from different platforms on this game is almost as easy as it is to add friends on Fortnight. All you have to do is go to the socials tab and search for your friend’s Xbox Gamertag or even their Steam name, and they will show up. However, this is dependent on whether they have played the game before. If they haven’t played before, then they wouldn’t be registered, and their name wouldn’t show up. However, once you can see their name, all you have to do is send them a WB friend request, and you can play together as soon as they accept it.
Final Thoughts
Playing with Xbox friends while owning a Ps5 is becoming less and less of a problem as games are pushing for cross-platform support despite the battle of the consoles never looking like it’s going to let up. However, you will notice that both Sony and Microsoft are adamantly against supporting cross-platform play at their end.
The games are left to fend for themselves here. They have to take responsibility for storing all the information related to crossplay. That is why some games are fully crossplay-supported, and others are only partially supported. However, Crossplay is becoming more and more popular, and we are seeing newer and newer game companies joining the trend.
We have noticed that very few games have crossplay support without relying on you linking your Ps5 or Xbox with a third-party account. The account will allow you to add friends from different platforms and store all your cross-progression. Understandably, having to juggle so many accounts to be able to play your favorite games can become frustrating. That’s where games like Fortnight, Minecraft, and even MultiVersus shine because they provide cross-play support without relying on you to link some account with your Ps5. You can add cross-platform friends without any hassle on them.
As far as adding cross-platform friends on your Ps5 the same way you can add other Playstation friends is concerned, that’s impossible right now and will be for the foreseeable future. Neither Sony nor Microsoft can afford to be so friendly with each other. Who knows how it would affect their sales if they removed the importance of friends getting the same console? They cannot afford to make that change right now.
