Before Elon Musk acquired Twitter in late 2022, the social media platform had a robust developer ecosystem where third-party companies integrated it into their products. Musk’s Twitter, now known as X, is an entirely different environment for developers.
As one example, as of Monday, June 10th, 2024, all major video game consoles (Nintendo Switch, Sony Playstation, Microsoft Xbox) have officially removed X/Twitter integration from their products.
X loses major gaming company
In April 2023, Microsoft will become the first video game console manufacturer to present They say they will be removing X integration from Xbox consoles.
In November of the same year, Sony followed suit. Announced The company also plans to remove X integration from PlayStation consoles.
Since then, Nintendo has offered the only major video game console on the market that has integrated the X. But last month, Nintendo Announced The company has also decided to remove X integration from its Switch console.
On Monday, June 10th, Nintendo officially removed the X-Merge. Nintendo Switch 18.1.0 Update.
X-integration removed from Nintendo Switch
“The following updates have been made due to the discontinuation of X (formerly Twitter) integration,” Nintendo wrote in the update notes, listing the changes that had been removed.
Mashable Lightspeed
According to Nintendo, with the removal of the X integration, users will no longer be able to select the “Post to Twitter” option when sharing from the Album on the Nintendo Switch Home menu. The link to X option under “Social Media Posting” in the User Settings menu has also been removed.
Finally, the X integration specifically for the game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which allowed users to post gameplay screenshots directly to X, has also been removed.
Why did Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft discontinue the X?
Neither Nintendo, Sony, nor Microsoft have explicitly stated why they removed X integration, but after Musk changed the price tier for X’s API access, all of these companies moved to remove support for X from their consoles.
For these integrations to work, they require API access, and before Musk acquired the company, Twitter at the time offered a generous free API tier for third parties building services powered by the social media platform.
However, under Musk’s leadership, X has effectively made its free API tier useless and started charging exorbitant fees for access to its available APIs. Musk’s new API pricing plan is: $42,000 per month It’s for enterprise API access, which is what companies like Nintendo need.
Judging by their customer base, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony have likely decided that they need to pay X at least hundreds of thousands of dollars per month just to allow users to post game content to social media directly from their consoles.
In a post from the company’s official account @XGaming, Musk’s X claims to have worked with Nintendo on the integrations, but Nintendo ultimately decided to remove them.
The tweet may have been deleted
“We worked with Nintendo throughout this process to secure API access for this integration, but ultimately Nintendo made the product decisions,” @XGaming said. post Read.
Gamers who still want to share content to X will need to save screenshots or footage of their gameplay and transfer it to a computer or mobile device before posting it to X.
