Imagine making a site so widely-used that the two biggest video game console manufacturers in the world put a dedicated button on their controllers so players could post to it. Now imagine screwing that up for no reason.
We don’t have to imagine, because that’s what’s happened with Elon Musk’s Twitter, which we all are supposed to call “X, formerly known as Twitter” in articles like this. First, Xbox got rid of Twitter integration back in April, but now so has PlayStation, as Sony has announced that it will no longer support posting on Twitter from its dedicated Share button on the controller, which was previously the easiest way to share screenshots and video clips on social media.
The reason is that Elon Musk has skyrocketed the prices of API access to Twitter, especially for large scale companies like Sony and Microsoft. For companies at that scale itat $42,000 a month with the highest plan reportedly $210,000 a month for 200 million tweets processed. In other words, it’s potentially millions of dollars per year that these companies simply have no interest in suddenly paying, after years of being able to use the functionality for far cheaper.
It was symbiotic relationship that previously worked out well for all three parties, Twitter, PS/Xbox and gamers, but now Elon’s persistent Twitter screw-ups have collapsed the entire thing. Now on PlayStation, for instance, players will have to use the dedicated PlayStation app to download and post clips, a much more irritating process that I doubt many people will bother with. I certainly wont.