PlayStation Network
Online Play
The PS4 makes some fundamental improvements to basic network functionality. You can now join friends' games from your friends list. The PS4 also introduces game-independent party chat for up to eight people, a godsend for multiplayer gamers hoping to avoid toxic public lobby audio.
Improvements
The PS4's home screen includes a feed of your friends' activity called "What's New," and this demonstrates quite a bit of potential. It shows what games your friends started to play, when they're livestreaming and … maybe too much stuff, actually. The What's New feed is a wall of informational text and from a distance, it's difficult to parse. This is indicative of a general tendency toward too many options, and an excess of surfaced information throughout the PS4's PSN functions.
There are other additions that seem beneficial, but have strange oversights that make them potentially problematic. The PSN friends limit has been increased to 2,000, which is great — but there's no way to organize them. Narrowing your friends or joining larger groups remains outside the abilities of the PlayStation 4 at present, despite system-wide Facebook integration, and sharing options that include Facebook groups. The PS4 also supports real names for friends, which could be a lifesaver — but it requires two-way authorization between both people to activate.
PSN is full of small examples of a system that badly needs reorganization and some cleanup. But make no mistake: Sony seems determined not to get left behind or leapfrogged in online this time around, and the basic functionality that eluded PSN on PS3 is now present.
The day-one inclusion of Twitch integration works well, and it's a good thing — the PS4 encrypts its entire HDMI signal in HDCP, which prevents it from working with most capture devices out of the box. For most users, the Twitch streaming is all you'll need, though we have concerns about general video quality via the system's internal hardware.
Trophies work similarly to the way they did on PS3, but now also include trophy rarity — something we hope everyone everywhere steals as quickly as possible.
The PS4 makes some fundamental improvements to basic network functionality. You can now join friends' games from your friends list. The PS4 also introduces game-independent party chat for up to eight people, a godsend for multiplayer gamers hoping to avoid toxic public lobby audio.
Improvements
The PS4's home screen includes a feed of your friends' activity called "What's New," and this demonstrates quite a bit of potential. It shows what games your friends started to play, when they're livestreaming and … maybe too much stuff, actually. The What's New feed is a wall of informational text and from a distance, it's difficult to parse. This is indicative of a general tendency toward too many options, and an excess of surfaced information throughout the PS4's PSN functions.
There are other additions that seem beneficial, but have strange oversights that make them potentially problematic. The PSN friends limit has been increased to 2,000, which is great — but there's no way to organize them. Narrowing your friends or joining larger groups remains outside the abilities of the PlayStation 4 at present, despite system-wide Facebook integration, and sharing options that include Facebook groups. The PS4 also supports real names for friends, which could be a lifesaver — but it requires two-way authorization between both people to activate.
PSN is full of small examples of a system that badly needs reorganization and some cleanup. But make no mistake: Sony seems determined not to get left behind or leapfrogged in online this time around, and the basic functionality that eluded PSN on PS3 is now present.
The day-one inclusion of Twitch integration works well, and it's a good thing — the PS4 encrypts its entire HDMI signal in HDCP, which prevents it from working with most capture devices out of the box. For most users, the Twitch streaming is all you'll need, though we have concerns about general video quality via the system's internal hardware.
Trophies work similarly to the way they did on PS3, but now also include trophy rarity — something we hope everyone everywhere steals as quickly as possible.
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