How Sony won the early next-gen gaming race (and how Microsoft caught up fast)
At this point in the march toward the release of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, it’s clear that gaming’s biggest rival platform-holders are taking very different approaches to launching - and prospectively shaping - the next five-plus years of videogames.
Where Sony has doubled-down on bigger, bolder versions of new and favourite gaming experiences as the primary sellers of its console - promising a cavalcade of sparkling reasons to join the party on day-one - Microsoft is taking a more modest approach to the new hardware push, with an expanding focus on Xbox as a growing gaming service platform rather than a singular machine. And where Sony has frequently - perhaps ironically - spoken more quietly and deliberately, Microsoft has often put on a bigger show, but not always delivered the same clarity.
So at this stage, just a few weeks out from the launch of both machines, we’ve produced a definitive deep-dive analysis of both consoles’ journeys thus far. Looking at every major beat of Sony and Microsoft’s campaigns, we’ve pulled hard data and audience insight from the social video and public response, looking beyond the bluster and hype of surface-level messaging, to dig into the enthusiasm, engagement, conversation, and true momentum each moment has delivered - or not.
Over the course of this series of articles, we’re going to cover the whole story, from both consoles’ initial announcements, right through to the last major developments in the race to launch. We’re going to analyse the data and explain all the highs and lows so far, and we’re going to use those insights to consider what the new PlayStation and Xbox’s past fortunes might say about their likely future prospects. Let’s start with the first nine months.
April 2019: The PlayStation 5 is announced, and makes a surprisingly low-key splash
Sony, still enjoying the PlayStation 4’s generation-long dominance, confirmed the existence of its successor with a casual, nothing-to-prove confidence. Departing from the industry’s traditional, grandstanding presentation of new hardware, the platform-holder delivered the first official word of its upcoming machine in an interview article between chief hardware architect Mark Cerny and Wired magazine, which slipped onto the internet with little fanfare in April 2019.
No stage show. No teaser press releases. No direct involvement with the traditional games media at all. Simply a calm, straightforward, text discussion of Sony’s vision and supporting hardware choices, apparently delivered under the assumption that simple existence of the news itself would perpetuate all the coverage required.
And Sony were right. Although originating in the most traditional editorial format on the internet, within 72 hours the Wired story spawned 93 news reaction videos from established YouTube content creators (see appendix for definitions), delivering a total of 17.5 million views and 588k engagements. In terms of online video content produced by traditional media companies with significant YouTube followings, we saw 3.7 million views accrued across 18 videos, with a total of 117k engagements attached.
The PlayStation 5 reveal conversation is driven by curious excitement and pensive praise
That represents a huge early wave of interest, and one that implies, at least in terms of numbers, that Sony’s low-key swagger had paid off. But what of the content of those responses? An analysis of the keywords, tone, and recurring subject themes of videos released over that period reveals some interesting insights into the nuance of both the content creator perspective and the public audience mood.
Looking broadly at the content produced, we see that the inclusion of ray-tracing (advanced graphical technology that simulates the behaviour of real light) is the lynchpin talking point, swiftly followed by the machine’s purportedly ultra-fast SSD. In that latter case, the scope to eradicate the age-old pain of game loading times clearly strikes a desired chord with the gaming hardcore, despite hard-drives being a potentially deeply unsexy subject for the uninitiated. Traditional media outlets also notably highlighted the bold strategy of Sony’s announcement, indicating that the deliberately ‘humble’ angle taken had indeed made an implicit statement of early confidence and tactical wiliness.
Drilling deeper into conversations and sentiment found within the consumer response (pulling social listening data from a consistent selection of carefully chosen ‘neutral’, mainstream media channels, to minimise bias - see appendix for definitions), we see a tone blending both excitement and disbelief at the promised new technology.
There’s a slight undercurrent of ‘Too good to be true’, with concerns over how well a console could really deliver the still-new ray-tracing technology, which high-end PCs of the time were only starting to get a handle on. The promised backward compatibility with PS4 proved a big hit across the board though, ultimately leading to an overall hopeful tone around the announcement - some complaints of ‘Too soon for next-gen’ notwithstanding - which eventually earned Sony an extra 114 pieces of video coverage, 14.3M views, and 502K engagements in the following six-month ‘quiet period’ between April and October 2019.
Those numbers show an impressive phase of continued interest and conversation despite no new official PS5 communication from Sony, but it’s also important to note that this data has been stripped of all the ‘junk’ clickbait content of the period. With opportunistic rumour-mongering, fake leaks, and amateur concept art reinserted, PlayStation 5 coverage jumps up to 77.9 million views over 528 videos, painting a resounding picture of the level of demand for content around the console.
October 2019 - The PlayStation 5’s second appearance consolidates interest and drives new engagement
As for October? That was when Sony followed up. And despite the long wait and rising desire for more information, the platform-holder resisted the temptation to crank up the theatre, maintaining the understatement and resurfacing with another Wired article, this time digging deeper into the company’s strategy and technology plans. Underplayed it might have remained, but this extended, six-month period made for a powerful opening salvo. Sony had not only kickstarted next-gen, but it had done so while exhibiting minimal stress or need to impress.
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The immediate follow-up to that second Wired article? A clear sense that momentum had been established, with 96 content creator videos (two more than last time) delivering 88% of the interest that the PS5’s initial announcement got, with 15.4M views. And despite the 12% drop in total views, engagement numbers still hit 99% of April’s numbers at, 585K, implying a more invested, excited audience at this time. Media channels followed suit, albeit with more diminished returns, releasing 16 videos that - while numbering two less than released in April - still earned 2.7M views, with total engagements clocking in at 85.4K.
Social conversation remained largely positive, though the console’s impressive hardware promises also drove some concerned speculation about the ultimate price of the machine, while talk of the all-important - but so far elusive - games line-up made its first appearance in the discussion. It’s also interesting to note that the conversational tone took an additional turn for the sentimental at this point, with the PS5’s place in the great, nostalgic PlayStation pantheon perhaps starting to become a factor as the console became (slightly) more real. At the same time, those early concerns about a too-early next-gen announcement suddenly seemed to drop out of the social conversation…
June 2019: The Xbox Series X is announced (but not shown) on gaming’s biggest stage
After a generation spent struggling to counteract the misfiring launch of the Xbox One - which saw an early, out-of-touch focus on multimedia content alienate the core gaming audience, leading to trailing sales figures - the announcement of the Xbox Series X was delivered with an altogether more bombastic flair than Sony’s calculated low-key approach. Staggering its own two-beat announcement schedule to land respectively two months behind each of Sony’s big 2019 moments (delivering its key news hits in June and December) Microsoft’s approach was both more traditional and significantly bigger in spectacle.
Leveraging the industry focal point of summer’s E3 gaming expo in June to announce the then-codenamed Project Scarlett during their own livestreamed keynote presentation, Microsoft unleashed a glossy - albeit detail-light - trailer, fuelled by company talking heads discussing the bold new, turbo-charged future of Xbox hardware.
For all the earnest sense of promise, there was little tangible detail to be had, beyond similar nods to ray-tracing and SSD storage as Sony had detailed, and certainly no concrete talk of games or release dates, beyond a mention of the newly-revealed Halo Infinite launching in the same ‘Holiday 2020’ window. But for all the gloss-over-detail approach, the wheels had officially begun to turn, and by spinning them up on the biggest industry stage of all, Microsoft was making sure that everyone saw the revolution begin.
It’s debatable, though, whether the approach was too traditional, and potentially too early. Looking at the video content response to the event, it appears that by announcing in more superficial terms, during a keynote filled with other, more immediate matters, amid the biggest, most concentrated, industry-wide news barrage of the year, Microsoft might have diluted the moment’s impact. A 72-hour dip into the video response from YouTube content creators reveals less than half the reaction that the PS5’s announcement enjoyed, with 43 specifically Scarlett-focused videos released, earning only 4.2M total views, 13M less than the PS5’s reveal accrued.
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Looking at YouTube video produced by traditional media outlets, the pattern is similar but less pronounced, at least in terms of raw numbers. The 15 videos produced here earned 65% of the views won by Sony’s announcement haul of 18, with a 2.4M view total and a similar ratio of engagements. But while this does imply a lower level of general hype, we should note that there are likely other factors in play.
These numbers do tally with the overall Xbox brand’s diminished sheen at this stage in the console cycle - in comparison to Sony’s huge, ongoing momentum with the existing PlayStation 4 - but simultaneously, the mid-E3 timing of the announcement (in contrast with the PS5’s isolated reveal) saw a deal more Scarlett coverage buried within compilation content and news round-ups, denying the console the exclusive spotlight it might have enjoyed at another time.
Xbox Series X reveal conversation is diluted by other matters, and lacks a focused energy
The above is compounded when we look at the conversations being had around the reveal. Digging into the keywords and subject matter dominating content creator output, talk of Scarlett itself is diluted by other Xbox E3 topics, such as the long-awaited sequel to Ori and the Blind Forest, and Keanu Reeves’ crowd-pleasing surprise appearance to promote CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077.
Looking at video material produced by traditional media covering the show, content is more focused on Scarlett, thanks to that sector’s expected attentiveness to hitting core news beats. But we also find very little in the way of true, angled conversation. Instead, the vast bulk of content comes in the form of straightforward, informative recaps and VoD archives of the livestreamed presentation. Reading between the lines, it could easily be argued that as well as diluting the already somewhat nebulous Project Scarlett message, the ferocious mid-E3 news churn had forced the time-pressed, traditional games media to simply deliver the basics before moving on to the next story.
Indeed, looking deeper into the tone and subject matter of the social audience conversations found around the video content produced by our ‘neutral outlets’ throughout June, interest is only tentative, and tainted with a degree of displeasure. Hope for the improved SSD technology is muddled with complaints about the dissatisfactory loading times on current Xbox hardware, and diminished by comparisons to the PS4’s already load-free God of War. The same ‘Believe it when I see it’ mantra that dogged the PS5’s announced rears its head here too. Though with hopeful Halo talk thrown into the mix, there is a sense of potential (albeit within a context of Microsoft having much to prove), with great additional interest in backward compatibility.
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The Xbox Series X’s next (much more literal) showing would come six months later, in December 2019, but the intervening period delivered another 103 pieces of video coverage from content creators and traditional media, earning 6.2M views and 367K engagements. That saw Xbox earn just under half of the PlayStation 5’s views during its equivalent post-announcement ‘quiet period’, and via almost the same volume of content. Still, despite the underperformance in views, the engagement total achieved 73% of Sony’s, which at least implies active conversation around the machine, regardless of how much clear-cut interest had yet been established.
The Xbox Series X hardware reveal grabs major attention, but discussion remains ambivalent
Jump forward to December, and Microsoft repeated their ‘event’ strategy, choosing to unveil the Xbox Series X’s official name and physical case design at another all-eyes-on industry gathering. This time, they swapped out the human factor for an arresting and bombastic trailer released during the annual Game Awards in LA. It would be another six months after this before we saw the physical look of the PlayStation 5, so in that respect, December put Microsoft ahead with an already more tangible machine.
In other respects though, the reveal and follow-up messaging still left many questions and unknowns hanging in the air. The entirely pre-rendered, CG trailer was more of a mood piece than a meaningfully informative piece of content, falling back on abstract imagery from key, safe mainstream franchises such as Halo, Forza, and FIFA, amid vague talk of immersion through greater graphical fidelity.
Despite six months of distance from the original E3 reveal, Microsoft had added little meat to the conversation, beyond the intriguingly non-traditional, tower-like design of the Xbox Series X itself, a chunky, mini-fridge-like form factor that instantly launched a thousand memes, amid a fair degree of goodwill. Still, Microsoft had been the one to close out the gaming news year, and had done so on the biggest platform of the winter.
In return for that, the Xbox Series X’s December trailer actually beat out the video coverage numbers for Sony’s respective October news bump, receiving 143 content creator videos to the PS5’s 96, and topping Sony’s 16 traditional media video responses with 33 of its own. Ostensibly then, it appears that the second stop of the campaign had seen the Series X hype train build more momentum than the PlayStation 5 had managed between its own first two beats. A deeper look at views and engagements ostensibly seems to compound this, though again, there’s more context to consider.
With a 57% greater total coverage volume than the PS5’s October news beat, the combined video content around the December Xbox trailer earned 68.5% more views, with 30.5M over Sony’s 18.1M. With an average of 173K views per video over Sony’s 156K, that seems a pretty conclusive - and perhaps surprising - spike in interest. But we should also factor in the format of the news beat. Using a polished, creatively stylised video presentation might well have helped Microsoft gain the edge in attention here, perhaps implying that despite offering less meaningful content than Sony’s second Wired article did, a refreshed, entirely more spectacular format might well have been what the now hype-primed public was craving at this point. Plus, pre-existing video content always helps with YouTube content creation. But whatever the granular reasons, Microsoft certainly reinvigorated excitement at this point, at least superficially.
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The tone of content and audience conversation though, following the initial flash and awe? Still mixed. High points were centred around the machine’s minimalist beauty, and the simultaneously announced Hellblade 2 from Microsoft-owned studio Ninja Theory. But with little more to go on, a tentative, analytical, only partially-optimistic mood pervaded the viewership discussion, amplified by a general dislike of the console’s name.
After this, it would be six months before Sony and Microsoft picked again up the next-gen conversation, in March 2020. The next stage of the next-gen race would see things heat up, with fiercer competition between duelling news announcements, and no small volume of mounting drama. It would also see the two platforms’ philosophies diverge in more discernible and significant fashion, introducing a few important new talking points and a fair degree of confusion - which would increasingly inform the conversation. But that’s a story for next time. We’ll see you in part two.
Appendix
What data did we use, and how did we choose it?
For the purposes of this study, we defined our data sources as follows:
All YouTube video sources had to be unofficial channels (that is, not run by either PlayStation or Xbox), and sponsored content would not be included.
YouTube content creator channels had to meet a minimum criteria of 20,000 subscribers in order to be surveyed.
YouTube channels run by traditional media outlets had to meet a minimum criteria of 20,000 subscribers in order to be surveyed.
To be counted as a video response to a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X news beat, a video had to focus primarily on the individual console at hand, and not discuss its rival.
PlayStation 5 content was defined using the terms “PS5”, and “PlayStation 5”. “PlayStation” alone was excluded in order to refine content accuracy.
“Xbox Scarlett” and “Project Scarlett” were used to accrue data for the June 2019 period, before “Xbox Series X” was adopted as the dominant search term in December 2019.
For ‘neutral’ social listening, we drew audience conversation data from the YouTube channels of four specifically chosen, prominent, global multiformat videogames and tech media brands - IGN, GameSpot, GamesRadar, and Digital Foundry - in order to minimise the effect of audience bias.
As for the tools we used, video volume, audience, and engagement detail was drawn by Fourth Floor’s Insight team, using our access to Tubular Labs technology. All social listening and conversational tone analysis was performed using a combination of Fourth Floor’s own in-house technology and IBM’s Watson tone analyser.