Yesterday morning, Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) Vice President of Marketing, John Koller, announced on the PlayStation blog that the gaming giant would be launching a PlayStation Communities app on both the iOS and Android mobile platforms.

The app is designed to allow gamers to maintain contact with one another while they are away from their consoles. These communities allow PlayStation gamers to join parties, talk about their shared interests, or launch into games with other community members. The app allows users to post images & text to community walls, and has the functionality to suggest communities, allow users to check their profiles & view others, see the different members of the communities they’ve joined, and receive push notifications for any posts or replies within them.

That’s all well & good, but let’s think for a moment. PlayStation already has one app for the PlayStation Network AND one for messages. Do gamers really need a third app for one console? One could wonder (besides money, of course) why SIE doesn’t take the time to research, design, and develop ONE app which includes the functionality that their users would need for all aspects of their gaming & community experience(s).

Looking at this in terms of numbers:
According to a poll back in April 2016, the average male gamer is 35, while the average female gamer is 44. Going by that, it’s a pretty decent bet that the average gamer is going to have a job, a social life, and lots of other things going on, for which they use apps. We also value the amount of space we have on our mobile devices. I, for one, don’t want to bog my devices down with too many apps which are (to quote The Food Network’s Alton Brown) “unitaskers”. In addition to that, the developers at PlayStation may want to take into account the sheer number of apps that smartphone users download every day. According to a Pew Research Center survey from November 2015, over 30% of those people who have downloaded apps (in addition to those that came pre-installed) report having more than 20 apps on their device, and 7% report having 50 or more.

So this begs the questions again… Why does SIE seem to want to inundate us with so many apps, just for one console? Do we really need them? For those of you who are PlayStation users; have you downloaded any of the PS apps? What do you think of them? What are your thoughts on having one more? Let us know your thoughts in the comments, dear readers!