The Xbox was first, back in April 2023 to remove direct integration sharing with Twitter/X. Now comes news Sony is following suit with the Playstation, via Polygon – Sony to remove PlayStation’s Twitter integration on PS4, PS5: X, formerly known as Twitter, becomes ever less useful:
Microsoft’s decision to that integration coincided with Twitter/X’s rollout of a new API pricing structure, which could cost a company like Microsoft more than $40,000 per month. For now, the other current-gen console with Twitter integration, Nintendo Switch, still supports sharing media to the Elon Musk-owned website.
Important to note there are workarounds to share your gaming screenshots and videos on Twitter for both Xbox and PlayStation, for both Xbox and Playstation. For the former, just save the content to the app, then share it manually through Twitter/X. On Playstation use the Playstation app. It’s an extra step, which certainly will reduce the content being shared, and that will reduce cost to the service, something that Musk has been championing doing: cutting expenses, increasing opportunites for revenue, like the idea of charging users for the blue verified checkmark or new subscibers a $1/month.
Add all this up and Twitter/X continues to change. I’m still using Twitter/X to share my daily #GameADayChallenges. It’s a viable game-related way for me to do that, but the usefulness of this service is shrinking. Am not jumping ship, yet, but it’s on my mind to find something else. Maybe just start using our own domain we have had for awhile, but continue to like the idea of using a third party service. Under Musk’s ownership, this is becoming less popular a concept.
On our Saturday score chasing recap show recently, Brady and I went through Twitter/X and how I removed thousands of followers, attempting to understand if the service would show me related content I would enjoy. Some viewers might have wondered why this was relevant, but monitoring changes — good, bad or indifferent — is worth considering when evelualting any service being used.
The result? Twitter/X provided some related tweets, but must say since Musk paid over $40 billion dollars, this might be the single worst investment this author can think of in the tech space like, well, ever. Musk keeps promising profitability at some point, which is important for any business, but Twitter/X never seemed to be that worthwhile. In the gaming space, it’s clearly becoming even less so.
Do you use Twitter/X for anything gaming-related? If so, what? Please share in the comments below.
UPDATE 12/30/2023 @4:30pm PST: In an odd twist of direction from actions taken above (removing Twitter integration from consoles for easy sharing clips and pics to Twitter), Elon Musk confirmed that Twitter/X is working on a way to stream from consoles directly to Twitter/X just like on Twitch.
Elon Musk was asked directly about making that change and he confirmed that they’re already working on a way to stream to X through a console.
X, Formerly Twitter, Is Working on Streaming Support for Consoles (comicbook.com)
Also, the article linked indicates it is unknown when this will be completed and whether or not this streaming feature will be limited to premium (paid) subscribers or free.