Social networking central to PS4 gaming, says Yoshida

Social networking, and the personal experience and discoveries that it enables, will be the highlight of gaming on PS4, Sony’s Worldwide Studios head has remarked.

As reported by CVG, Shuhei Yoshida explained that “the discoverability of things” will be PS4’s biggest highlight in a recent Q&A session.

“It’s like checking your social media every day,” he said. “I really like that people can find out about new games, information, and what their friends are doing, without even booting the game.

“For example, you can check out whether you have had new challenges from friends from the home screen of every game. All the important information is presented to you immediately. The same game might come out on PS3 and PS4, but playing the game on PS4 will be much more fun, I would expect.”

On stage at Sony’s Gamescom press conference in Cologne last month, Yoshida opened the show with a brief live demonstration of the PS4’s user interface, which showed off the system’s social features.

Yoshida added: “What I showed was only a small portion of the UI. Obviously the system software is still in development. We really wanted to show off the social aspect of the UI. The minute you boot up, you’ll see all the information about games you own, what your friends are doing, whether there’s any new DLC coming out, or if your friends have shared a video or screenshot. And you can also spectate anyone playing PS4.”

PlayStation 4 is set on arrive on November 15th in the US priced at $399, and November 29th in Europe and Australia at £349 and €399.