Things are about to get a little more complex than this

With the launch of the PlayStation 4 next month, there’s a good chance that you’ll have three unique systems each connecting to a single PSN account. That brings with it some headaches, as there are some differences between the devices that will make managing features such as your Friends List more challenging. Fortunately, the platform holder has released some additional information on how this will all work so that you can wrap your head around it prior to release.

For starters, the PS4, PlayStation Vita, and PlayStation App will all be able to display up to 2,000 friends. This is a significant improvement over the PlayStation 3, which could only handle 100 friends. That’s not changing with the release of the next generation console, meaning that if you exceed the limit on one of the Japanese giant’s newer systems, you won’t always be able to access all of your contacts on the existing machine. But what will the device show instead?

Right, here’s where it gets complicated. To begin, the PS3 will show up to ten of both your most recently received and sent friend requests. If this tally in addition to the number of currently online players exceeds 100, these will be sorted alphabetically via online identification until the limit is reached. If that number doesn’t pass 100, then offline players will be included alphabetically until the total is achieved. Are you keeping up?

If the figure still doesn’t cross the limit, then the system will filter in any further outstanding friends requests. Of course, if you haven’t reached 100 friends by this point, then you’ll probably be feeling like that poor unfortunate Forever Alone character. It’s a complicated algorithm, but we reckon that it just about makes sense. Scratch your head in the comments section below.

[source us.playstation.com]