Sony’s PlayLink links your phone to your PS4 for multiplayer minigame madness

Enlarge (credit: Mark Walton)

You'd be forgiven for wondering just what the heck Sony's PlayLink is. Rumoured to have been pulled from the publisher's E3 2017 press conference at the last-minute due to Wi-Fi issues (a problem that the poor souls trying to liveblog the event can attest to), PlayLink was instead pushed out via a press release, whereupon it was completely subsumed by the maelstrom of E3. That's a shame, because Sony's latest take on the so-called "second screen" experience-where games are played using phones and tablets alongside a TV and a PlayStation 4-is lots of fun, so long as you have some like-minded buddies to play with.

Using a phone or a tablet to enhance a film, video game, or TV show played out on a big-screen certainly isn't a new idea, though it hasn't exactly taken the world by storm either. The feature all but disappeared from the PlayStation Vita, while the most high-profile use on the Xbox (where it's called Smartglass) died a death alongside Lionhead's Fable Legends.

PlayLink differs in that it isn't an add-on to an existing game, but a collection of smaller party games explicitly designed for group play-kind of like the Jackbox series of trivia games, but much more involved. Up to five players-each with their own Android or iOS device and a copy of the free PlayLink app-can play together. All you have to do is make sure they're all on the same Wi-Fi network.

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