Sony has declared the termination of PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4’s integration with X, previously known as Twitter, marking another significant departure of a major company distancing itself from the platform.
Users of these consoles will no longer have the direct capability to share gaming content, such as video clips, on X starting November 13.
The decision means PS4 and PS5 gamers won’t be able to seamlessly publish their gameplay activities directly from their consoles. Instead, Sony suggests a workaround: users can manually capture gaming moments, transfer them to a computer or mobile device, and then post content through the X app.
While Sony didn’t offer specific reasons for this move, it follows a similar decision made by Microsoft, Sony’s competitor, earlier in the year. In April, Microsoft also removed Twitter integration from its Xbox gaming console and online advertising platform, citing changes to the Twitter API by Elon Musk that resulted in excessive fees for access.
Mr Musk’s alterations to Twitter’s API earlier in the year led to a significant overhaul, with new pricing models imposing substantial costs on applications utilizing the service. This change prompted various companies, including Intercom, to discontinue their Twitter integrations due to the high fees introduced under the new API model.
Also, Sony experienced remarkable success in its latest financial quarter, selling a staggering 4.9 million PS5 units, contributing to a total of 46.6 million units sold since the console’s launch in November 2020.
Despite falling short of last year’s holiday sales, this quarter surpassed the same period in 2022 by 1.6 million units.
Supply chain challenges previously hampered production, but Sony overcame these hurdles, ramping up manufacturing and reaching 40 million in sales by July 2023.
The company aims to ship 25 million units this financial year, requiring an additional 16.8 million sales.
Sony President, Hiroki Totoki expressed confidence in achieving this ambitious target.
“Anticipating a surge in sales with the launch of smaller PS5 models ahead of the holiday season, Sony remains optimistic,” Reuters reported.
Beyond hardware, the firm reported 67.6 million game sales in the second quarter, with 4.7 million being first-party titles.
The upcoming quarter is expected to yield higher first-party sales, especially after Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 sold an impressive 5 million units within just 11 days, surpassing its predecessor’s 80-day sales of 9 million copies.”