Overview:
PlayStation Communities is another app from the PlayStation mobile app team, that aims to make using your PS4 and mobile device together easier than ever. This app is designed to allow you to manage your PS4 communities and find friends and other players who share your interests and play together.
Developer: PlayStation Mobile, Inc.
Cost: Free
Impressions:
PlayStation Communities is another app from the PlayStation mobile app team, that aims to make using your PS4 and mobile device together easier than ever. This app is designed to allow you to manage your PS4 communities and find friends and other players who share your interests and play together.
PlayStation Communities is an app from Sony that is designed to let you find friends and players with shared interests by joining “Communities” based on region, game, or whatever you’d like. There are hundreds to choose from, but a lot of them do suffer from low population issues. The app is serviceable and allows you to search, join, and message in communities without having to turn on your PS4, which is handy, but in all honestly the app isn’t something a casual PS4 user would really need. This app seems aimed squarely at the hardcore players in Sony’s camp, those who have a lot of friends and use the PlayStation as their primary gaming platform.
The Communities app has no glaring issues, you are able to search for communities by game name, or location and language and join them easily. Once joined, your communities are listed on the main screen and you are able to see player population and active players, as well as messages and updates from them at a glance. The app will also push notifications to you when a community updates if you prefer. There isn’t much more going on here, to be honest, the app does as advertised and nothing more. The user interface is inoffensive enough but could stand to be a bit cleaner, maybe delegate the different tabs to a hamburger menu button on the side, and let the community pages be larger and more readable.
PlayStation Communities is another in a string of PS4-centric apps from Sony that allows you to manage your PS4 remotely. The others are the PlayStation app, which allows you to manage friends lists, browse the shop, and use your phone as a remote or second screen. Alongside that, there is the PlayStation messages app which is solely for messaging on the PlayStation Network. This fragmented app library highlights the biggest issue with Sony’s PlayStation mobile device experience. Compare this triple app mess to the Xbox app for Android, which performs all of the functions of all of these apps in one making for a much easier and smoother experience for second screen gaming. PlayStation needs to unify all these apps into one, larger app that performs all of the same functions. It would reduce bloat on phones and tablets, as well as reduce confusion in the PlayStation community over apps and their functions. It’s 2017 guys, can we get our acts together?
Conclusion:
Overall, the PlayStation Communities app is a solid, functional app that has a very limited purpose and shouldn’t be a standalone app. That, however, has no significant bearing on its score here today. PlayStation Communities is a good companion to your PS4, and if you find yourself in need of a few players for a Destiny raid or to fill out your multiplayer lobby in Call of Duty then this app is a solid source of players and a recommended download.
Download PlayStation Communities from the Google Play Store
