Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4 research - the battle commences!

The June edition of Harris Buzz is now available - you can download the full free report here.

This latest edition allows us to compare the buzz for the Xbox One announcement/reveal with that measured for the PlayStation 4 event earlier in February.

As ever, our Harris Buzz reports look at the awareness, discussion level and excitement buzz for the latest news and releases in entertainment and technology.

As such it gives us the earliest preview of which of the two titans are most likely to succeed in the battle for the next generation. I'll leave Wii U aside as my earlier post suggests it is rather unlikely to be a contender.

So what's the story? How do Xbox One and PlayStation 4 compare for buzz?

Things couldn't be closer. Well they could, but statistically speaking a difference of 1% here or there is completely insignificant.

The two announcements are, in other words, completely tied for the level of Buzz created.

Now bear in mind this research was conducted directly after each console's announcement. So the data for PlayStation 4 comes from our February/March edition of Buzz. But this is the fairest comparison as we're looking here at the Buzz created directly after announcement.

Another thing to bear in mind is this fieldwork was conducted prior to E3, where even more details of the games were revealed (and we actually saw the PS4 console for the first time). We'll be measuring the E3 news in our next edition of Buzz, which will be available in July.

We'll continue to monitor the next gen battle. Will the PS4's lower price be a determining factor in which will be crowned king of the next gen? What about the "always on" connection for Xbox One and the restrictions for used games. What about using a Kinect to control a home media centre? Questions, questions.

As things stand, as far as the public is concerned, the battle is too close to call.

Iron Man 3 rocks, Facebook Home sort of flops - latest research

Iron Man 3 gets a massive thumbs up from respondents in new research conducted.

On the other hand, Facebook Home is found to be more of a damp squib.

All this is contained in the May Harris Buzz report. The full report is available to download here for free.



As usual it's a national poll of GB respondents where we ask their awareness and excitement of the latest releases in entertainment and technology.

Iron Man 3 and the release of Facebook Home, the skin for smartphones, were among the news stories we covered in the May report.

Here's a full list of what we covered in the May report:

·         Daft Punk’s new song breaks Spotify record and charts at Number 1

·         Defiance TV series and video game

·         Evil Dead movie (2013 re-make)

·         Facebook Home platform launched for smartphones

·         HP Slate 7 launched (Android tablet device)

·         Iron Man 3 movie

·         LOVEFiLM set to pilot TV series online based on public vote

·         Oblivion movie

·         Olympus Has Fallen movie

·         Psy releases ‘Gentleman’ single, follow up to ‘Gangnam style’

·         Reddit issues apology over Boston bombings “witch-hunt”

·         Star Trek video game

·         Twitter launch #Music service

Iron Man 3 did exceptionally well. We've tested 250 news stories, film releases, games and device launches over the last few years.

For our Excitement Buzz measure, Iron Man 3 ranks in 5th place in our all-time list.

This is really good.

You can see where Iron Man 3 ranks in our all time top 10 for Excitement Buzz on the left.



It's not surprising to see Iron Man 3 doing so well given it was reported recently that it became the fifth top-grossing film of all time, according to online movie tracker Box Office Mojo.

And what about Facebook Home. There's been mixed reviews for it since Mark Zuckerberg launched it April. It's been downloaded for Android over half a million times. But an average user rating of 2.3 out of 5 on Google Play tells its own story.

And we see equally disappointing results in our May Buzz report. Only 10% of the GB public tell us they were excited by the launch of Facebook Home. It's early days for Facebook Home. There is a dire need for Facebook to capitalise on the shift to mobile so it should be seen as the start of an evolution for them.

The full PDF report can be found here. And links to all prior monthly Buzz reports can be found here.

Our next Buzz report will include the reaction to the Xbox One reveal, Star Trek Into Darkness, Daft Punk's Random Access Memories and Grid 2.