EA reveals Single Identity plan for cross-platform friends lists

EA has engineered a cross-platform identity system which it hopes will allow users to communicate and play together even when they access games from competing platforms.

Currently referred to as Single Identity, and is part of EA's push to become a virtual platform in and of itself.

VentureBeat reports the system should allow users to find each other, communicate and even initiate multiplayer sessions across platforms, where developers have allowed such a function, all in real-time.

The system utilises a single backend system which services all platforms - consoles, PC, mobile devices and social websites. It will allow players to transport their progress and saves between platforms, and took 1,500 engineers more than 18 months to build.

It's a simple idea but EA claims nobody else has ever achieved it before, and it should be particularly useful in the coming years, when we have multiple generations in circulation at the same time.

The benefit to EA is that it can track a player's habits more easily, allowing it to tailor its marketing, and to save about 50% on data storage costs.