After a Record Breaking State of Play in June, the Latest Edition Did Disappointing Numbers 1
Image: Push Square

Sony’s previous State of Play in June is the second most watched PlayStation livestream ever, beaten only by the PS5’s reveal during the peak of the pandemic in 2020.

To date, it’s attracted over 5.1 million views, with the bulk of those coming around its air date on 2nd June. (It officially set the record on 6th June.)

But this week’s latest instalment won’t come close to the June edition, as it’s managed just 2.9 million views at the time of writing, which is some 24 hours after it aired.

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(It’s also worth noting that YouTube has recently changed its algorithm for view counts, meaning numbers for this presentation will be inflated compared to past presentations.)

Analytics firm Streams Charts says this instalment peaked at just 982k viewers across the Internet, which is a massive drop-off compared to the previous edition’s three million concurrent watchers.

Of course an important detail here is that the latest broadcast aired at 6AM PT / 9AM ET in the US, in order to hit Japanese time zones. Usually these air at around 2PM PT / 5PM ET, so that will have made a massive difference.

Still, feedback to this latest show has been very negative, with 59% of Push Square readers voting it as ‘Poor’ or worse.

The most watched individual trailers, accurate as of the time of publication, are as follows:

  1. Marvel's Wolverine: 1.6m
  2. GTA 6 DualSense: 886k
  3. Resident Evil Movie: 783k
  4. Until Dawn 2: 616k
  5. Ghost of Yotei: 421k

I thought State of Play was starting to find its footing this year, as the engagement and viewer numbers were really high coming out of the June edition, and the feedback was broadly very positive as well.

But I think this messy instalment has set the branding back to square one again.

My biggest criticism is that you never really know what you’re going to get out of the show; sometimes there’ll be back-to-back bangers, other times there’ll be minor updates about existing games.

I think this inconsistency messes with expectations, as even when communicated in advance, you never really know quite what you’re going to get.

[source streamscharts.com]