Written by – Steven Williamson
You may remember when Gamespot launched a Twitter contest to gauge fans reaction to the arrival of Sony and Microsoft’s respective next-gen consoles later this year.
The contest asked users to tweet the hashtag #GameSpotPS4 or #GameSpotXbox in order to pledge their allegiance to their most anticipated console. PS4 immediately wiped the floor with its opponent, gaining 91percent (approx. 88K) of initial votes compared with 9 percent (approx. 9K) for Xbox One.
Now it appears that someone is trying to shift the balance back in favour of Xbox One by unscrupulous means.
PS4 shoots to a dramatic early lead
So, what’s happening? Turn overleaf…
@page
The contest is ongoing and in most countries PS4 is whipping Xbox One considerably. In the U.K, for example, 90 percent of the votes go to PS4. In the U.S, however, the voting has swung to 60 percent in favour of Xbox One compared to 40 percent for PS4, an innacurate reflection of the voting in the rest of the world.
As you can see from the shot below, it seems that someone is spamming the GameSpot account in the U.S. to turn the tide.
This sadly means that the results of the contest cannot be deemed accurate. It’s also not impossible that bots have been used on both sides to attract votes, which is something that is going to have to be investigated.
Either way, someone didn’t like the fact that PS4 shot to such a major advantage in a contest that has attracted thousands of visitors and is therefore a fairly true reflection of how the gaming public feel about next-gen consoles and which one they’re most interested in.
We don’t think this would be a Microsoft tactic, but more a disgruntled Xbox fanboy who just couldn’t stick the fact that the PS4 will be the gamer’s choice of console this year.
Source: Gamesided