For the longest time, Sony has run its own official message board, a place where PlayStation owners could get together, hang out, ague pointlessly and, most importantly, troubleshoot. But on February 27, that board will be shutting down.
Sony announced the move late last week with a very short, very blunt message:
Hello,
Beginning 27th February, the PlayStation.com forums will no longer be available.
We invite you to continue the conversation via PlayStation.Blog, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. For product support, please visit the support site, Playstation.com/help/.
And that’s it. I know times change, and habits with them, but this still sucks! The PlayStation Blog is just a blog, with comments obviously locked to the post they appear under. And Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are not only hellsites, home to the very worst examples of human communication, but also deeply unhelpful, because they’re a) owned by other companies, and b) they’re nowhere near as focused as a forum.
I wouldn’t be able to count how many times a Google search has directed me over the years to the PlayStation forums for solutions to PlayStation problems, from sketchy PSN download speeds to video issues to firmware complaints. We won’t get that kind of centralized, searchable collection of knowledge (or at least shared experience) back on those external sites, and if you’re even thinking of saying “well just ask on Reddit”, please excuse yourself.