The great X spiral continued today as Sony revealed on its support site that integration with the social media platform formerly known as Twitter will be disabled on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles next week.
“As of November 13, 2023, integration with X (formerly known as Twitter) will no longer function on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 consoles,” Sony said (via The Verge). “This includes the ability to view any content published on X on PS5/PS4, and the ability to post and view content, trophies, and other gameplay-related activities on X directly from PS5/PS4 (or link an X account to do so).”
Sony’s decision to drop X integration comes several months after Microsoft opted to disable uploads to the platform from Xbox consoles and the Windows Game Bar. Blizzard removed Twitter integration from the World of Warcraft MMO even earlier, back in February.
A reason for dropping the service wasn’t provided, but as we noted when Blizzard elected to remove Twitter integration from WoW, changes to the Twitter API made earlier this year are the likely culprit. Access to the API, which had previously been free, was replaced with a far more restrictive option, while Basic access, “for hobbyists or prototypes,” now goes for $100 per month. The next level up is the Pro tier, “for startups scaling their business,” that goes for $5,000 per month, while the Enterprise tier, which I imagine is where a company of Sony’s scale needs to be, offers different monthly subscription prices “based on usage and needs” that start at $42,000 per month.
More recently, X announced that it was “deprecating some of our v1.1 endpoints” and requiring users to move to the newer v2 version. Given X’s woes in the year since Elon Musk took ownership, which have included declining user numbers and a massive loss in value—trends that seem very likely to continue into the foreseeable future—Sony may have simply decided that it wasn’t worth the expense and headache of continuing support.
I reached out to X for comment and received its standard “Busy now, please check back later” auto-reply. I’ve also asked Sony about its reasons for dropping X support, and will update if I receive a reply.
