BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here
Edit Story

PS4 vs. Xbox One: Winner Emerges Via Social Media Analysis

SAP

By Lee Clemmer, Media Analytics Lead, SAP

Gamers everywhere are eager to fire up next-generation game consoles, but how will they throw down their hard-earned cash? Sony releases the PlayStation 4 tomorrow; Microsoft drops its Xbox One next week. Both consoles continue to experience ups, downs, setbacks and trash-talk from fans and the media-at-large. With so much anticipation, speculation (and billions of dollars) circling the future of home entertainment and gaming, let’s take a closer look at who's winning the hearts and minds of consumers as we head into launch.

In order to obtain accurate data, I powered up SAP Social Media Analytics by NetBase, a tool that captures and indexes massive amounts of unstructured social data, including Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums and more. Here's what I found.

Total mentions for the past three months are:

  • 1,100,327 mentions for PS4 (62%)
  • 669,850 for Xbox One (38%)
  • PS4 garnered nearly twice as many mentions when it was introduced compared to the Xbox One
  • During the E3 game trade show on June 11-13, PS4 dominated online conversation with over twice as many mentions as the Xbox One

In terms of pure volume of conversation, PS4 is clearly winning; but what are people saying? By comparing positive mentions for both consoles, starting from the time they were announced (May 21), we see the following breakdown:

What does this mean? For every one positive mention that Xbox One gets, PS4 gets two positive mentions, another encouraging sign for the PlayStation. (Coincidentally, this roughly mirrors the breakdown you'll find on xboxonevspsfour.com). It appears the PS4 only gets one out of four negative mentions, as opposed to about two out every five for the Xbox One, but this is only the average over the last three months.  Let's take a look at how these trended over that period on a timeline:

It's clear something (bad) happened for the Xbox One the week of September 9th when negative mentions slightly outweigh positive. After that, net sentiment never breaks 30% again. Turns out Edge published an article quoting anonymous industry sources stating that the PS4 "is currently around 50% faster than its rival Xbox One."  The story was picked up by IGN, widely shared and appears to have impacted the narrative. To show how, let's look at the top attributes people mentioned along with key terms of PS4 and Xbox One.

It's plain to see that the PS4 is now considered more "powerful" and Xbox One "weaker” again reflected when we take a look at what people don't like. Thus far it's been looking better for PlayStation 4, but lest you think I am partial to that console, it hasn't been rosy for Sony either. In the two comparisons above, one of the more positive attributes of the Xbox One is "launch lineup" and in second place for what people don't like about the PS4 is "have no game."  Here, Xbox One is the clear winner.

But as industry pundits like to say, "software sells hardware" so superior hardware specs may not matter much if compelling game titles are unavailable on your console. Net sentiment below clearly favors the launch game lineup of Xbox One, which is hovering comfortably at around 50%.  It's been a little rockier for the PS4 on the other hand, with sentiment taking a nosedive the week of October 13.  After taking a closer look at what happened, turns out a rumor was published on October 16 and confirmed by Sony on October 18 that Driveclub - an upcoming racing game title - was being delayed until 2014.  This came after Ubisoft announced on October 15 it was delaying its highly anticipated title Watch Dog until 2014 (albeit for both platforms).

Positive/Negative/Net Sentiment for each console's lineup over the past 3 months (click to view larger images)

By taking a cursory glance at some of the data and visualizations made available by SAP Social Media Analytics by NetBase , at the moment the PlayStation 4 is perceived to be more powerful with better hardware specs, and in general is being talked about more.The Xbox One has been trailing in the PR battle and picking up negative sentiment initially around its DRM policy (something I didn't go into here) and more recently around hardware comparisons. Ultimately, however, games sell consoles and on this front the Xbox One is the clear winner, with a popular Sony title and several cross-platform titles recently announcing delays into 2014.

Which console will you buy?

This story originally appeared on SAP Business Trends.