The first PlayStation State of Play of the year, Sony’s showcase of upcoming releases, reached the series’ highest viewership ever. Not only did the event break 2,000,000 concurrent viewers for the first time, but it also recorded the highest watch time of any previous State of Play. Streams Charts presents the viewership statistics for the event and the top channels that contributed to this.
State of 2025 dealt with some of gaming’s most popular franchises. Borderlands 4 was teased by developers Gearbox with a release date set for September 2025, a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3 was announced to release on August 28 this year, and a new DLC for 2023’s highly popular Lies of P. Other presented titles included Monster Hunter, Digimon, and Splitgate.
Throughout the hour-long event, the State of Play received 1.96M Hours Watched and maintained 1.8M Average Viewers, both new series’ records. As State of Play continues to grow and gain viewers, the amount of channels broadcasting the event continues to rapidly increase.
Co-streamers from around the globe watched the State of Play, discussing their favorite games and upcoming releases; 2025 marked the first time that over 1,000 channels covered a State of Play. While YouTube Live remained accountable for most of the State of Play’s watch time, almost 800 co-streamers and channels covering the event were based on Twitch. On average, YouTube Live channels, which were more likely to represent organizations than individual streamers, received an average viewership over double what Twitch-based channels achieved.
This mixture of viewership sources is part of what allows the State of Play to be so intensely popular. While the vast majority of co-streamers are not reaching 1,000 viewers, their contributions still add up to an overall vast amount of viewers. These co-streamers bringing their small, passionate communities to watch the State of Play is a key feature of what makes this event so special for the gaming and livestreaming industries.
The official PlayStation YouTube account was the most popular broadcaster of the event, coming out far ahead of the other official PlayStation accounts based on Twitch. The official PlayStation YouTube account actually hosted three livestreams for State of Play, one in Japanesel, one in English, and one with English subtitles. The viewership statistics in our graphic reflects its larger English-language stream, but together, the Japanese and English-language broadcasts on the account received over 700,000 PV.
Outside of the highly popular official broadcaster, other organizations based on YouTube such as IGN and the Brazilian Flow Games received sizable viewership. While the YouTub channels covering the event were usually more popular than the individual co-streamers on Twitch, some industry-leading creators were able to match their viewership. Zack “Zackrawrr” Hoyt, also known as Asmongold, received the highest viewership of any Twitch co-streamer at over 75,000 Peak Viewers.
While Zackrawrr was the only Twitch streamer with enough viewers to rank so highly, many other creators trailed slightly behind him. North Americas’ Félix “xQc” Lengyel, Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker, and Maximilian “Maximilian_DOOD” Christiansen were the most popular English-language Twitch streamers, and Brazil’s Alan “alanzoka” Ferreira and Spain’s Juan “IlloJuan” Alberto were also highly-watched; IlloJuan was the closest streamer behind Zackrawrr, at over 51,000 Peak Viewers.
2025 marked Sony’s most popular State of Play ever, surprising many by jumping to over 2,000,000 peak concurrent viewers. Usually, Sony’s opening showcase of the year is its most popular, and other State of Plays this year may not be able to recreate the extreme highs of the February 2025 edition. Nevertheless, gamers and fans around the world have some of the most exciting gaming franchises returning this year, some of which will surely be extremely popular in livestreaming.
