New Product launch monitoring: 9 suggestion for PS5 managers

In this article, we decided to analyze the consumers’ reactions to the launch of a new product: the PlayStation 5. 

We’ll go deeper into the insights that show improvement area for finetuning the product release moment and try to set a couple of actionable strategies for PlayStations managers’ next steps, explained at the end of this post.

Would you like to know how a Digital Consumer Intelligence approach can help your Business? Book a Demo to get a free hands-on demonstration of our platform.

On June 11 th, PlayStation revealed the new PS5 with a special event streamed on YouTube that attracted more than 12 Million of views so far.

Initially, it was set for the 4th of June, but Sony postponed it due to the ongoing protests in the US and to respect the Black Lives Matter campaign.

That was a brilliant move from Sony; in fact, we notice a considerable involvement of the gamers community into the BLM movement.

During the event, in addition to the console (also with a disc-less version), PlayStation revealed more than 20 new games and a series of new accessories.

We analyzed more than 195.000 conversations on Twitter from 156.000 users that expressed an intention of “buy” and “not buy” the PS5, which generated an average 1.32% of engagement.

The gender distribution was 79% male and 21% of women, with a prevalent age within 25 and 34 years old (53,8%).

Here we catch the first fascinating surprise, taking a look at the distribution of ages between the different genders:

Why are younger males (18-24 years old) less than young female attendants? Where are male teenagers going?

There could be two possible answers:

• Male between 18 and 24 years old are more and more fascinated about the idea of building their gaming PC and play with it, while females are less attracted to that.

• Younger male borns with a keen awareness of Xbox concerning Millennials, and this market slice was being homogeneously shared between the two competitors, a theory also confirmed by Forbes. At this point, the gender gap is only a matter of game titles.

Once we extracted from the web all the data into our research environment, we asked ourselves: was the PS5 event appreciated by the gaming community? Surprisingly, the answer is: not so much. Only 59% of users reacted positively to the launch.

The main reason for the 41% disapproval was less transparency on prices. However, the price for the console perceived by users ranges within 499 and 599 dollars for the basic model.  

The most engagement Tweets about the event focus on that:

Even the lack of any release date generated high levels of disapproval, anger, and sadness. 

However, there’re so many reasons for Sony to not show prices and dates now, both Marketing and operational. 

The first could be the waiting for the Xbox release to finetune the right price; the second one is related to uncertainty about the production costs due to the ongoing crisis, as Bloomberg said.

The Digital Edition design seems to be more appreciated concerning the disc-version one. By the way, people would consider buying it only with an evident price convenience, due to the consciousness about the fact that they will be stuck on Play Store games pricing without other possibilities.

More than 65% of Gamers love the new PS5 design and defined it as “really cool” and “better than previous ones”. They appreciated the departure from rigid rectangular designs and they found it futuristic enough.

Here we can see the emotions associated with the topic:

As we can see from the chart above, the joy, admiration, and surprise emotions involve over 50% of the conversations.

However, a massive number of users are in disappointment with Sony’s choice. They think that it seems an old design, someone said “as a fake leak of early 2000”, and look very fragile due to design shape.

Another point involved colors: within 3.376 users who talked about it, 2.431 would prefer a black version, and some even decided to wait for the release of this version before buying it.

But the main reason that justifies this disappointment is the vertical adaption. 

Into console orientation posts, the 54% arose these problems (in relevance order):

Another frequent word among the design conversations is “Xbox”. That teaches us that one driver for PS5 buying consideration is design comparison with Xbox, more the first is perceived better more the possibility of people buying it instead of Microsoft console.

The battle is mainly around functional v.s. aesthetic, according to consumers: PS5  looks like a wi-fi router, Xbox looks like a mini-fridge. PS5 wins with its design over Xbox, even if the last one has the most functional shape.

The most engagement Tweets on this topic are comedy focused:

Matching all consumers’ preferences isn’t an easy job, but for problems above, we can see that there is much potential for improvements.

The 56% of those who talked about accessories would buy them instantly and are excited thinking about playing with them.

On the other side, a lot of people are confused about the sales options, they don’t understand if accessories will be included in the console pack and are angry due they do not know prices.

Another doubt is related to the necessity of space in the entertainment center.

We decided to study them in-depth:

As we can see, PlayStation accessories seem to raise a lot of consents, but for those who just bought some of the PS4 related accessories, the newest being them pretty frustrated.

Moreover, PS conservatives are not so happy for the controller and remote Xbox-like designs.

A lot of PlayStation productions revealed during the event showed a girl as the main character. This choice probably aims to expand the target audience and lead more females to the gaming world.

It is a strategy with a huge potential impact, considering that, as we previously saw, the female gender is too much lower concerning the male yet ( 21% v.s. 79%).

Here the list of the most discussed and appreciated titles:

In this case, Spider-Man turns out to be the most talked about also that the Gamers have not yet fully understood whether they will have to buy the entire game again to play the new “Miles Morales” expansion.

PlayStation remains unbeaten concerning game exclusives. Games titles are one of the main drivers for PS5 buying consideration and Sony knows it very well.

Someone is willing to buy it only for playing games such as Spider-Man, God of War, Last of us, and more. 

Moreover, analyzing the preferred game’s titles of our audience, we can see that most of them are PlayStation owned:

However, gamers suggest PlayStation push on FPS (First-Person shooter) like Socom and Killzone, mainly due to the fact Xbox has Halo and Gears.

The preferred genre it’s just that:

Here a list of suggestions for PlayStation Top Managers:

KPI6 is the best platform on the market for both pre-launch and post-launch of new products or services.

We’re able to get you an in-depth analysis of your target audience or find it from scratch to reduce at minimum the probability of money wastes.

Then, as you can saw, we can figure out a lot of determinant insight for finetuning the post-launch strategies to make the most of the market.
The report above shows only a little bit of our insights; it’s fundamental analysis. If you want to get more information about this topic or about the launch of your new product or service book a demonstration and we’ll glad to show you the power of Digital Consumer Intelligence.

Would you like to know how a Digital Consumer Intelligence approach can help your Business?

Book a Demo to get a free hands-on demonstration of our platform.