Gaming's social experience has really evolved over the years, leading to improvements that let you have fun, all while connecting and sharing your experiences with friends and like-minded gamers.
However, as the games industry progresses, Sony seriously lacks in offering an in-depth, functional, and enjoyable social experience, despite consistently making outstanding games and offering a fantastic current-gen console in the PS5.
So, what makes Sony's social experience for gamers lacking and how can Sony improve?
Sony's Social Shortcomings
Sony makes incredible games. It's produced a fantastic console in the PS5. However, Sony's social experience is lacking in many areas.
Currently, Sony offers a half-baked experience that, unfortunately, lessens a few really fun and insightful aspects of gaming, such as sharing and discussing your experience with friends and other gamers.
There's a lack of useful features and community spaces, as well as inconsistent quality amongst Sony's social experience. Sharing media, having discussions, and showcasing your personality and opinions to your fellow gamers should be a lot easier.
These social shortcomings stand out in two key areas: the inefficiency in transferring media onto other devices, as well as the lack of a complete service that encompasses all of what Sony can offer.
It's Trickier Than You Think to Share Media to Other Devices
While Sony has a basic framework for its social experience, often it feels underdeveloped. For example, a missing feature is simply the ability to share your media between devices easily.
You can share PS5 screenshots and videos with your phone, but it isn't as simple as you think. And, besides using an external hard drive, there isn't a quick and easy way to share PS4 videos to your phone or PC privately.
Sharing photos and videos to your desktop is an even more awkward and clunky process, which displays a lack of care on Sony's part about you sharing an awesome photo or moment of gameplay with your non-PlayStation friends, or just to keep for yourself.
There Isn't an All-In-One Service for You
Gaming has also moved beyond just playing games on your console. There's a ton of games media, streaming services, achievements, accessories, an online store, community forums, and more, all of which would be wonderful to access all in one place.
Services like Steam are a shining example of how a lot of these elements can come together in a single app, giving you a streamlined, feature rich, and accessible experience.
Sony talks about developing a community of gamers but doesn't offer the services to realize this. The gaming giant actually regresses on this goal, like when Sony shut down PlayStation Communities.
How Can Sony Improve?
While Sony can't fix these issues overnight, there are definitely steps it can take to improve, ranging from implementing certain features to include fully fledged apps.
These are not unique ideas. We've seen them before which highlights how far behind Sony is here; Sony—being Sony—should have the infrastructure and resources to try a few of these out, at least.
Here are four ways in which Sony could improve its social experience for gamers.
1. Easier Media Sharing Between Devices
As mentioned earlier, it's not exactly straightforward to share your media across devices, and if you're short of an external hard drive, it's a downright pain to transfer videos on PS4.
One way in which Sony could fix this issue would be by implementing a service that simply syncs your media across all devices via an app, maybe called "PlayStation Gallery". Here, you could easily view, edit, and download photos and videos that you have synced from your console.
Accessing your media is already a feature on social messaging apps. For example, the mobile and desktop versions of WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger sync up your photos and videos in direct messages, allowing you to download them and view your entire gallery.
While this is slightly different, as it's coming from a console and not a phone or PC, would it really be that hard to create a mobile and desktop app that syncs media from your console?
A less developed (but perhaps easier) option for Sony could be to incorporate this as a feature on the mobile PS App, introducing a section called "Gallery".
Although this option ignores PCs—which also don't have a dedicated app, more on that later—it could be a short-term solution that at least provides an easier method of transferring media to one device.
Gamers have been calling for an easier way to transfer media from their consoles for years, and it shouldn't be an impossible problem for Sony to make that happen.
2. A New Community
When Sony closed PlayStation Communities (without explanation or apology), it shut down a social space for gamers without providing an alternative solution.
Now there isn't a space within the PlayStation ecosystem to interact with like-minded gamers over your favorite games, discovering new friends, and a social space where you feel you belong. And yes, there is PlayStation Parties, but it's not the same as a dedicated community or social space for your gaming interests.
Sony could fix this by... well... by bringing back PlayStation Communities or implementing a brand-new community feature, which it might do with Discord. Sony could put something in place as an addition to the PS App, or just keep it on consoles for now.
Whilst there are some great social networks for gamers, wouldn't it be great to socialize and discover more about the games you love within the PlayStation ecosystem?
3. PlayStation Now for Macs
One enormous benefit to cloud gaming on your computer is that you don't need an expensive gaming rig to play all the latest games at decent settings.
Services like Stadia and GeForce Now allow you to stream a library of titles to your computer when you might not be able to run those games well or even play them at all.
Sony has its equivalent of cloud gaming: PlayStation Now. However, one big difference between Sony's cloud gaming service and the former two services is that you can't stream PlayStation Now games on a Mac.
On the surface this makes some sense—Macs have a different operating system and aren't really for gaming—but when you consider that Stadia and GeForce Now are compatible with iOS devices, let alone just Macs, this explanation falls short.
While you can technically play PlayStation Now on Mac, using Bootcamp, the process is a pain and lacks optimization. An official method with dedicated support from Sony would at least fix this issue.
Introducing PlayStation Now to Macs could be a great way for Sony to showcase its excellent games to a new, exciting community of potential gamers.
4. A Dedicated Desktop App
The current PlayStation desktop experience is missing a lot of features and isn't really a holistic affair. It's essentially all on a website without a dedicated app.
Now, this might not sound like a problem on paper—you can access the PlayStation Store, PS Now, PS Parties, Support, News, etc. However, a dedicated desktop app, such as Steam's desktop app, shows how outdated, lacking, and clumsy the entire experience feels with Sony.
Many of the features seem underdeveloped—you can't post or read reviews on the PS Store, accessing DMs is clunky and unintuitive—and without a dedicated social space or community area, the whole process feels—well—like a clunky website and not an actual PlayStation experience.
If Sony can create a dedicated PlayStation app for computers, then it can provide a seamless and comprehensive PlayStation experience that feels fresh.
And how cool would that be?!
Picture a place where you can do all things PlayStation, from seamlessly navigating between your games library, cloud gaming, Remote Play, a PlayStation community, PS Parties, the PS Store, trophies, and read up on the latest news via the PS Blog.
There could be a PS gallery section, where you can share your media, all synced up from your latest gaming session, with a community, or with friends.
It might sound like asking for a lot, but Sony has most of these features—it's just a matter of better integrating them and fleshing them out to improve the user experience vastly.
Could Sony Improve Its Social Experience in the Next Few Years?
Sony produces fantastic games and consoles, as well as offers a range of great gaming services.
It would be amazing, however, if Sony could tie these all into one place and also introduce a more social area, such as the now-closed PlayStation Communities. That way, Sony can proudly boast a social experience for gamers that matches the outstanding quality it brings in its games and consoles.
Partnering with Discord is a promising step forward, but might be a few years till you get a fully fledged social experience exclusively with PlayStation.