Sony ($SNE) has a gigantic product launch this year with its PlayStation 5. The most popular gaming console in history is still on track to come out this holiday, despite potential production delays, shipping problems, and work from home orders in various countries. Sony is more well-known for its gaming division than its other tech products or movie line in 2020, and every decision from now until the end of the year is critical for the next generation of video games.
So it was both a delight and a huge bummer for PlayStation fans to read the news this month. We all got a surprise early look at the PlayStation 5 controller, the DualSense, just days ago (we won't get into any memes made about it or the discussion about the color here, take that talk to Reddit). We also learned about some pretty major delays for the PlayStation 4, as The Last of Us Part II and Iron Man VR were indefinitely pushed and will not be making their spring debuts.
As a result of these announcements, online chatter has exploded. The buzz is palpable for this new console, even higher for the hype around some new games to play this summer, and we visualized all the reactions below.
The PlayStation brand had its Facebook 'Talking About' count shoot up 300% in two days. More than half a million people were talking about the new controller online.
Mentions of Sony went up 117% over the same two day period, according to its Facebook Talking About Count.
And mentions of Naughty Dog, the legendary development studio behind The Last of Us and the Uncharted series, were up and down the last few weeks, getting as many as 75K people talking about the delay to arguably the most anticipated title of the year. The game is finished, as revealed by Naughty Dog, but will not be coming out in late May due to logistics issues caused by the Coronavirus.
Finally, every Sony-owned Twitter account has seen an increase in followers over the last few days. As more news trickles out about the PlayStation 5 and new games, we expect all of these figures to go up even higher in the months to come. That's going to be very true for when we get a look at the new console itself, and more games being played in 4K resolution.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.