Facebook says the PS4 doesn’t need a special app for users to stay connected.
Consoles may exist to play games, but the non-gaming elements of the experience are also incredibly important. With that in mind, one find it disconcerting that Facebook says they won’t be making an app for the PS4.
Believe it or not: Facebook Engineer Colin Creitz says that PS4 won’t have a Facebook app because it doesn’t really need one. Speaking with Polygon, Creitz says that, rather than taking the time to build an app, Facebook’s games partnership team has focused on optimizing the way content from a user’s Facebook feed will be shown on the console, which will be filtered into the console’s “what’s new” section. He even describes the PS4 browser as “actually pretty pleasant.”
Facebook and the PS4 are also highly connected at the system level. Case in point, Facebook ID will be one way users can verify their identity on PS4: “It’ll bring in your Facebook profile picture and you have the opportunity to manage whether people are looking at your PSN avatar or your Facebook profile picture, [which is displayed] on a per-other user basis.”
At the same time, Crietz also cited the maintenance associated with building dedicated apps for the PS3 and Xbox 360 made the prospect of making next-gen apps less than appealing: “One of the things that came out of our experience with the previous generation of consoles is that we found that maintaining the native apps was a relatively high maintenance burden, and didn’t really lead to a high fidelity experience,” said Creitz.
Source: Polygon
