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The story
SIE’s new PS5 commercial, “The Time Is Now,” became a hot topic on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (Geha) board. Within tens of minutes of being posted, the video’s view count topped 470,000 — yet it had only 23 likes. Users compared this to another game video posted 11 hours earlier (8,029 views, 87 likes) and called the ratio unnatural, raising suspicions of vote manipulation or paid ad placement. Some also pointed out that the ad’s tagline, “Now is the time to buy,” offers no concrete justification, fueling speculation about inventory clearance or the timing of a PS6 launch.
The Time Is Now｜It Happens on PS5.
Source: youtube.com / original video here
What people said
Wasn't there a price cut right after this dropped?
Who even is this comedian?
Or is this just inventory clearance?
Kind of impressive in its own way
They just say 'now's the time' on a regular schedule
Came here just to see this!
Finally, the moment has arrived
Makes you wonder what kind of video racks up views like that
It's probably just bait numbers, but this is way too sloppy
Though come to think of it, when Monster Hunter World came out they'd bump it exactly 1 million views a day, then it'd stop dead the second it hit 10 million — same kind of sloppiness
SIE probably wants to clear out inventory too lol
It was probably already sitting at 470K views the moment it was posted lol
I bet the real number's somewhere in the last 4 digits
YouTube's view counter isn't real-time
Viewers are always seeing it with some lag
Check again tomorrow
Also, isn't this just a video running as a YouTube ad? If so, hitting 100K views instantly makes total sense
Gotta say, that's a pretty innocent take
It's either been running as a paid ad slot the whole time, or someone's cooking the numbers — has to be one or the other
If it were running as a paid ad slot, it wouldn't make sense for it to barely move for the first 30 minutes after posting — that's the contradiction
Views: 471,435, Likes: 23
For comparison, the video posted right before this one — Arcade Archives Xevious, posted 11 hours earlier
Views: 8,029, Likes: 87
Same old tricks as always
Make an actually fun game before pulling stealth marketing and shady tactics, Sony
Re: #82
Laying the view count and like count side by side really makes it obvious
Lol
What are the PlayStation fanboys gonna say about this lmao
Maybe some outfit started a new service exploiting that
Like 'we'll inflate your views right after upload' or something
YouTube's been selling ad placement slots forever — buying one makes your view count explode
Yeah but the post I saw was saying even for that, this seems way too fast
Though I don't actually know how other paid-ad videos typically trend
If you buy a worldwide ad placement, it genuinely is that fast
No joke — the ad starts playing simultaneously across every device everywhere
Background and Key Points of Debate
Five years after the PS5’s launch, SIE has kept running ads urging consumers that “now is the time to buy.” What sparked debate in this thread wasn’t the ad’s messaging itself, but how quickly its YouTube view count climbed. Reaching several hundred thousand views immediately after posting can happen simply by purchasing YouTube ad placement, so it doesn’t automatically prove fraudulent inflation. Still, posters repeatedly pointed out that the ratio of views to likes was wildly out of line compared to other videos on the same channel, which is what fueled the suspicion. Some also noted that view counts can lag behind the real figure on the viewer’s end, so no firm conclusion was reached. One post claiming annual sales of the Japanese PS5 Digital Edition were “around 400,000 units” also appeared in the thread, but this is an unsourced guess and cannot be confirmed as fact.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry, “Geha”) thread “SIE: ‘Now Is the Time to Buy a PS5.’“
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