So yeah, I really wanted to know if my buddy on his Xbox could finally join my posse on the PS4 for some Red Dead Online chaos. Been years since this game came out, you’d think they’d figure it out by now, right? My dumbass just assumed they probably patched it in. Didn’t even cross my mind to check properly first. Big mistake.
The Moment of Truth
Alright, fire up the dusty old PS4 Pro. Takes like ten minutes just to whirr to life, that thing needs retirement. Load up Red Dead Online, get my guy standing in Valentine. Grab my phone, text the Xbox crew: “Yo, jumping into RDO. Join me!”
They fire up their game, one on an Xbox One S, another on a Series X. I see them pop online, their little icons light up. Awesome. I hit the posse up menu. Try to invite them directly… nothing. Nada. Zilch. Where’s the invite? Figured maybe they needed to be in the same session. Tried joining their session directly through the Rockstar Social menu thingy. Game just flat out refused. Kept giving me errors like “Failed to join session” or just kicking me back to the menu. Super annoying.
Digging for Answers
Okay, scratch that plan. Maybe they need to find my session? So they both try searching for my name in the Social menu, looking for players. My profile shows up! Hope! They try to join my session through my profile.
You know what happens next? Same darn errors I was getting! “Unable to join session.” Happened every single time. We reset games, rebooted consoles, cursed at the internet router. Nothing worked.
That’s when the confusion really kicked in. Why could they see me online but not actually join me? Made no sense. Time to hit the internet forums. Opened up my laptop, started scouring through old Reddit threads and dusty Rockstar support pages.
Here’s the messy truth everyone else already seemed to know:
- Nope, no cross-play. PlayStation plays with PlayStation.
- Xbox plays with Xbox.
- PC? Well, PC players have their own wild server filled with modders apparently.
- And the reason you see your Xbox friend online in the Social menu? That’s just the stupid Rockstar Social Club overlay doing its thing, showing you who’s online regardless of what plastic box they’re playing on. It taunts you! It literally can’t do anything about connecting you across platforms.
All those threads basically yelled the same thing: Rockstar never enabled it for Red Dead Online. End of story.
The Obvious Conclusion
So yeah, after wasting like an hour trying every dumb workaround I could find online – changing network settings, restarting the game a million times, having everyone gather at the exact same spot on the map – zip. Nothing. Zero. Nope.
Can a PS4 play with an Xbox on RDR2 Online? Absolutely not. Doesn’t matter if it’s an old Xbox One or a shiny new Series X. Doesn’t matter if you both have gold bars coming out your ears. The game just isn’t built to let that happen. Rockstar never flipped the switch. All that “seeing each other online” stuff is just a cruel joke from the Social Club. So my buddy stuck to his Xbox gunslingers, and I hung out with fellow PlayStation cowboys. Separate worlds, at least until they decide to finally join the party. Which, judging by the past few years, probably means never.