Xbox chief responds to Sony's concerns about online safety

If you've been reading Gamereactor over the last couple of days, or if you're interested in Minecraft or Rocket League in general, then you're sure to have noticed the cross-platform debate going back and forth between Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.

In summary, it centres around the fact that Minecraft and Rocket League players on the Nintendo Switch will be able to play together with people on both PC and Xbox One, while Playstation 4 owners can only play with PC users.

Microsoft has fueled this debate to some degree by announcing cross-platform play for Minecraft during this year's E3 press conference. Following that, many people wondered why Sony is not involved. Sony explained that they would not allow the feature because of child protection concerns, because they can't vouch or oversee the communities present on other platforms.

Phil Spencer, chief of Microsoft's Xbox division, has now responded to this point, in the process progressing the discussion a little further. Polygon has reported on an interview on Giantbomb (now offline) in which Spencer said the following:

"The fact that somebody would kind of make an assertion that somehow we're not keeping Minecraft players safe, I found — not only from a Microsoft perspective, but from a game industry perspective, like, I don't know why that has to become the dialogue. Like, that doesn't seem healthy for anyone."

"We take the safety of Xbox Live, of our players across all of our games — inside of Minecraft, obviously an incredibly important part of that — it's incredibly important to our team. [...] We would never put Minecraft in a place where we felt like [...] we weren't keeping our players safe."</i>

What's your take on the matter? Are Sony's concerns valid, or is it merely a convenient excuse?