UPDATE: Epic has offered an update on the confusingly worded statement issued to press earlier today regarding Rocket League's future status on Steam, now insisting that it has "not announced plans to stop selling the game there".

In its initial press release, Epic wrote that "The PC version of Rocket League will come to the Epic Games store in late 2019. In the meantime, it will continue to be available for purchase on Steam; thereafter it will continue to be supported on Steam for all existing purchasers." That combination of In the meantime and thereafter reading as if Rocket League's sale on Steam would continue only until it transitioned to the Epic Games Store later this year.

In a new statement issued to US Gamer, however, Epic has said, "We are continuing to sell Rocket League on Steam, and have not announced plans to stop selling the game there...Rocket League remains available for new purchasers on Steam, and long-term plans will be announced in the future." All of which feels a lot like a game of semantic evasion, but for now the takeaway is that Rocket League may or may not continue to be sold on Steam post its Epic Games Store debut. Make of that what you will.

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Rocket League's long-awaited cross-platform party feature will finally be heading to Xbox One, PS4, Switch, and PC on February 19th, as part of the incoming Friends Update, developer Psyonix has announced.

Rocket League's cross-platform party system, which was originally expected to launch last year, is an extension of the cross-platform features introduced to the game in January. That initial update enabled players to randomly matchmake with or against each, regardless of platform, across all available Online match types - including Casual, Competitive, and Extra Modes. However, this month's Friends Update goes a step further.

When it arrives, Rocket League players will gain access to the new Friends List. Friends can be added to this from any platform (via the new RocketID system), and can then be invited to join Parties and Clubs. This means that, for the first time, it'll be possible to buddy up and play matches with specific friends, no matter which platform they're on.

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Psyonix has announced that Rocket League's long-requested PlayStation Cross-Play Beta support is now live, meaning that players on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC can finally indulge in a spot of four-wheeled footie together as one.

This time last year, of course, such an occurrence would have seemed practically unthinkable. Sony remained doggedly resistant to calls from fans and developers for console cross-play on PS4, even as more and more games enabled play between Switch, Xbox One, and PC. Finally though, last September, Sony relented, unveiling its PlayStation Cross-Platform Beta - a programme which, initially at least, would be limited to Epic's all-conquering Fortnite.

Fans of Rocket League, which has featured cross-play support between Xbox One, PC, and Switch since launch on Nintendo's platform, were hopeful that PS4 players would soon join in the fun too following Sony's announcement. At the time, Psyonix was enthusiastic about implementing the feature, but acknowledged that progress would depend on Sony.

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Developer Psyonix has announced that Rocket League will finally receive its long-promised Xbox One X Enhanced support on December 3rd.

Xbox One X enhancements were initially announced for Rocket League in 2017 but, due to technical challenges, were pushed back into 2018. With Enhanced support now mere weeks away though, game director Scott Rudi has confirmed that Xbox One X players will soon be able to experience Rocket League at native 4K at 60 frames per second, and with supersampling enabled when playing on a 1920 1080 display.

Additionally, on supported 4K televisions, "Rocket League will offer HDR with options to adjust Paper White and Contrast settings, as well as a Side-by-Side visualizer."

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Let's face it - everything's better with friends, and this is a mantra Rocket League developer Psyonix has championed for some time. As one of the studios most vocally in favour of cross-platform play, Psyonix has actually already implemented the feature, which currently allows PC, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch players to game together (while PlayStation can still only play with PC - for now).

The problem with the current setup, however, is players cannot party with players on other platforms before heading into matches. This is where RocketID comes in - a standalone system designed to allow cross-platform players to group up. Yet despite promises the highly-anticipated system would be ready by the end of the year, it seems RocketID won't arrive until early 2019.

In the latest Rocket League roadmap blog post, Psyonix explained it has made the "difficult decision" to push the release back in order to make the system "as intuitive, stable, and polished as possible before releasing it to the world".

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Rocket League developer Psyonix has always been a major proponent of console cross-play, and now the feature has been implemented in Fortnite, the studio has issued an update on the future of cross-play in its footballing car game.

In a Reddit post, Psyonix CEO Dave Hagewood said Rocket League had been built as "a cross-platform game from the very beginning". Alluding to the Fortnite cross-play news, the CEO expressed delight he could "now acknowledge that all the major consoles are making progress towards a truly all-platform cross-platform play experience".

Despite the overwhelming positivity of the statement, it sounds like full console cross-play may still take some time to arrive in Rocket League. According to Hagewood, "cross-platform play is not something Psyonix and Rocket League can do on its own". The CEO added that implementing cross-play "takes the substantial cooperation and coordination of many partners, most notably the platform holders themselves". For this reason, Hagewood advised players "have some patience" as Psyonix works to fulfill its vision of a "truly unified Rocket League community".

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Rocket League developer Psyonix has announced that the four-wheeled footie phenomenon will be ushering its ninth competitive season on Monday, September 24th.

The accompanying Season 9 update will be released simultaneously on all platforms and, according to Psyonix's latest blog post, introduces a number of new features. Most notably, Rocket League's ninth season marks the arrival of Extra Modes, formerly known as Ranked Sports. This sees Dropshot, Hoops, Rumble, and Snow Day modes lose their Casual status, and join the game's Rank-based Competitive Playlists.

Additionally, Season 9 adds a new in-game soundtrack - Rocket League x Monstercat Vol. 4 - plus Season 8 Rewards, and various quality of life improvements and bug fixes. The recently introduced Rocket Pass 1 continues into the new season, concluding on November 26th.

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Don't expect to see esports in the Olympic Games any time soon. International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach believes the video games being played still promote violence and killing too much to be included.

"We cannot have in the Olympic programme a game which is promoting violence or discrimination," Bach told the Associated Press during the recent Asian Games - an event where esports were, for the first time, a feature, albeit as a demonstration sport only. "So-called killer games. They, from our point of view, are contradictory to the Olympic values and cannot therefore be accepted."

It's an arguably hypocritical stance given the long list of combat or weapon sports already in the Olympic Games: boxing, martial arts, fencing, shooting, archery and so on. Bach himself was even once an Olympic gold-medalist fencer.

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Rocket League's first Fortnite-style Rocket Pass will go live next week, on Wednesday 5th September at 6pm UK time on all of the game's platforms - PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One.

Rocket Pass 1, as the first pass is called, will last from 5th September until 26th November and include 29 free rewards. You can then pay to unlock the pass' premium tier, which holds 70 snazzy prizes. Simply play matches online to progress up the ranks.

You can take a look at all the premium tier rewards via the Rocket Pass site - the selection includes new cosmetics like car skins, wheels, explosions, and sounds, plus XP boosts and crate keys. Here's a look at them in action:

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Nearly two years after adding crates and keys to Rocket League, developer Psyonix has published the rarity levels found within them for the first time.

Every crate released so far has followed these same rarity percentages, Psyonix said in a new blog posted last night.

Rare items, somewhat contradictrily, account for 55 per cent of drops. The rarest tiers are exotic (four per cent) and black market (one per cent).

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