A revelation that caught many gamers off guard was the news that the PlayStation 4 would not come with MP3 playback and DLNA media streaming. This naturally caused some outrage over the lack of perceived features compared to the Xbox One and PlayStation 3. According to Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, this came as a shock to him and the PlayStation team, saying it was “the biggest surprise for us all internally at Sony” in an interview with GiantBomb.
The focus has been always on the game features
According to Yoshida, “It’s not like we actively decided ‘Let’s not do this feature so that people will subscribe to Music Unlimited. Like we’ve been saying, the focus has been always on the game features. And some of the features we wanted but we couldn’t get in on day one — game features — we are very disappointed and worried about not having on day one and that have been the higher priorities.”
He continued by saying, “We didn’t really think about MP3 or DLNA. We always thought we’re going to do that eventually. We’ve been doing it with all the products. So it caught us off guard. People don’t really talk about these features, right? But when we say we don’t have it, some people get really mad [and say,] ‘I canceled the pre-order!’ Wait….”
He assured GiantBomb that the team was looking into it, saying, “As we speak … the teams in Japan and U.S., the system guys are discussing how and when we can put these features on PS4.”
