Gears of War 4 already had some cross-playing capabilities between Xbox One and PC players, allowing them to team up for the co-operative modes in game. However, you know gamers and especially gamers who consider themselves good friends relish the opportunity to completely ‘own’ their friends in competitive multiplayer. Well, if you love doing that and you and your friends own Gears of War 4, I have good news for you.

Social Quickplay is now going to see cross-playing extended towards competitive gameplay. So finally you can shoot your friend’s head from your camping spot and watch them expire in a pool of blood, before they respawn and repay the favour of course. Microsoft recently held a beta for the feature, with over 115,000 participants taking part in over 750,000 matches to test matchmaking and other capabilities of this gamemode. Both platforms apparently had similar K/D ratio results, score and kills. Match quality was also perfect for most players, so the feature is being rolled out soon.

I’d say that if you’re going to give it a go though, don’t expect perfect results first time. 115,000 people is a lot, but more might possibly stress something to breaking point before Microsoft get everything running shipshape. Not saying it’s going to happen, just be ready for minor issues.

Core multiplayer will be separate from Competitive, so if you’d rather limit your pool of random players to people on the same platform as you, you’re still able to do that as well.