As more and more details are revealed about the upcoming console generation, I’m constantly jumping between being impressed, disinterested, annoyed, or over-zealous.
There’s a lot that has to be answered for, but there is also a lot that still needs to be explained more thoroughly. Such as Sony sneakily announcing that PlayStation Plus would be a required service for online play wasn’t exactly a kick in the teeth, but it’s a step down from their place in the current generation. The big companies are keen to try and get us to pre-order their consoles, but they’re still holding out on details in order to skew our point of view.
So, let’s look at the latest confirmed facts concerning the PlayStation 4. We now know that we need PlayStation Plus in order to play online with our friends (or against random people across the globe), but what about the other social services that the console is promising to offer?
Well, Sony have now confirmed that there will be a upper limit on the number of friends you can have on your friend list. The number available on the PS3 at the moment is 100, and for some people that’s enough, but for others it isn’t.
The PS4 will have an upper limit of 2,000 friends on your friend list, which is definitely an improvement over 100. I don’t think anybody is going to feel restricted by their console on this particular front.
We’ve also got word of the party chat feature, allowing you to communicate with your friends via your console. This feature would primarily be used for co-ordinating movements in multiplayer games, but could also be used just for social calls, so it was presumed that it’d be exclusive to PlayStation Plus subscribers. This turns out to not be the case however, as Sony have confirmed that it will be a free feature that is part of the PlayStation 4.