PS4 should have been equipped with state-of-art cloud features. But as we all know, this console is made by Sony, not Microsoft. Only way to utilize self-acclaimed powerful sharing features is to share it via PlayStation Network and tiny selection of social platforms. That being said, if you can manage to export the photos and videos to smartphones and computers, you are set for actual “social gaming”.

The idea here is very simple. Most PlayStation owners have more than one account for a guest player —unlike Xbox, applications and games can choose not to register second controller as temporary guest player. If you have more than one account, you can export medias.

1. (optional) Create a secondary PSN account, and add it as a friend.
2. On your smartphone, install “PlayStation app” and “PS Messages”.
3. On the PlayStation app, login with your primary account.
4. On the PS Messages app, link it with the PlayStation app.
5. On PS4, now you can send medias as attachments to secondary account as a message (text chats).
6. On your smartphone, you will be able to download your own media from the chat between you and the secondary. All messages will appear as sent from the primary account.
7. (optional) You can rename the chatroom to “Screenshots” or any other that fits your taste.

Ultimately, this is not an ideal situation for any PS4 players. Not all people prefer to share raw footage of their play on Facebook or Twitch. There is an ample chance your friends will not welcome posts related to video games, regardless of their stand on video games; even gamers themselves sometimes prefer not to see any spoilers. And most Twitch streamers use their own streaming device hooked up to a computer, rather than built-in software solution provided from Sony. Essentially, Sony got it wrong.

Instead of opening the platform up to social media and social media services, and frankly, to the internet, Sony chose to limit PS4’s sharing features to Blackberry generation of standards. Not only it should let cloud storage companies to add their own apps, they should have simply opened up the media folder on a local network.