The PS5 reveal event saw a 750% spike of people talking about it on Twitter

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Head of Gaming Content Partnerships at Twitter explains how PS5 and Animal Crossing has dominated the gaming year

PS5 vs Xbox Series X
(Image credit: Future)

The next-gen console launches have proven a hit on Twitter this year, with the PS5 reveal event seeing a 750% spike in people tweeting about Sony's next-gen console.

That info has come from an exclusive interview with Rishi Chadha, Head of Gaming Content Partnerships at Twitter, who spoke to GamesRadar and gave us an insight into the year of gaming on Twitter, from how the next-gen consoles have driven huge spikes in conversation to Animal Crossing: New Horizon's dominance on the platform. 

On the topic of next-gen consoles, Rishi tells us: "With Xbox, you've seen that the conversation this year continues to have large spikes, multiple large spikes throughout the year, as they have multiple events, as they make multiple announcements."

However, he tells that with PlayStation, there were two major spikes: "With Sony, the average conversation tends to be a little bit higher. But they had these big, two big spikes in the year. The first one was in June, around their reveal and their showcase. The second one was in September on their second showcase.

"[The June reveal event] was about a 750% increase in conversation volume compared to the previous 30 days. And what's crazy, actually was that, up till that point, the largest spike in conversation that we saw on the platform, just for all of gaming, was actually around the launch of Animal Crossing."

While Sony's PS5 Future of Gaming reveal event might have seen the biggest rise according to Twitter's metrics, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been a surprisingly huge driver of tweets this year, becoming Twitter's most talked-about video game, beating the likes of FIFA, COD, and Fortnite. 

Rishi explains: "Animal Crossing has just absolutely dominated the charts this year, globally, and for the UK, Animal Crossing is the number one most talked about game of the year. [Last year] Fortnite held that title [in the UK] and globally Fate Grand Order held that title. And so to see Animal Crossing come in and just dominate the charts has been very impressive."

Ben Tyrer
Ben Tyrer
Contributor

Ben Tyrer is a freelance games journalist with over ten years experience of writing about games. After graduating from Bournemouth University with a degree in multimedia journalism he's worked for Official PlayStation Magazine as a staff writer and games editor, as well as GamesRadar+ (hey, that's this website!) as a news editor. He's also contributed to Official Xbox Magazine, Edge, PC Gamer, GamesMaster, PC Games N, and more. His game of the year - no matter the year - is Rocket League.