While Microsoft and Sony may be publicly playing nice, the console wars are still alive and well — especially if you look at what people have been posting on social media.
Until we start getting sales figures, we won’t actually know who’s “won” this particular battle. But we can get a good idea of which console seems to be in most demand, utilizing good old data.
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Rise at Seven has crunched the numbers, using Google search data to work out which console is more popular in each individual country. As you can see from the map below, there’s a pretty clear winner.
There are plenty of countries that are greyed out from lack of data, but the rest shows the PS5 is more popular all over the planet. Xbox Series X still gets a few countries like China, Mexico, and New Zealand, but the map alone doesn’t show a very good look.
Fortunately for Xbox, the numbers are a little bit kinder. But only a little bit. In the United States, for instance, Xbox scored 43.02% compared to the PlayStation’s 56.98%. Similarly the UK scored 42.72% for Xbox, while PS5 took the crown with 57.28% of the searches.
Interestingly the country where Xbox is most popular is Afghanistan, where it dominated 90.72% of searches. Meanwhile PlayStation’s biggest fans are the Maldives who picked up a score of 99.74%, closely followed by Dominica with 99.12% and Japan with 98.94%. Considering how poorly Xbox has historically performed in Japan, it’s not surprised they’re among the most diehard PS5 fans.
Of course the data isn’t everything. For one it’s not clear whether the search data focused on Xbox in general, or just the Series X. After all Microsoft has two very different consoles coming on November 10, and there are plenty of reasons why you’d want to buy a Series S instead. Like price.
The Series X is also in a weird situation. It isn’t getting any "exclusive" games per se, since all its first-party games will also be available on Xbox One and PC., Likewise you’ll be able to stream some of those games to Android phones via Xbox Game Pass Ultimate without needing to drop $500 on a new console. If you can only get one console, and based on stock issues you’re lucky if you get that, it makes more sense to pick the one that has more exclusive games.
Or, you know, maybe people just really prefer the PS5. Everything we’ve seen so far looks great, and as big as it is, it is much nicer to look at than the Xbox Series X’s fridge-like aesthetic.
Sony executives must be very happy with the positive reception the console has had so far, but this map is likely to boost their spirits even further.
