Last night, streaming platform Twitch held the first Chat Choice Awards, allowing viewers to vote for their favorite games live. It also teased the audience with what appeared to be a PlayStation 5, which sat in the background for two hours before finally being revealed to be an exceptionally large, elaborate cake.
The teasing started early, with host Sean “day9” Plott bringing up a conspicuous item in the room of fellow presenter Mari Takahashi.
“Now before we go on to our next award, I see out of focus in the back… is that a PS5?” Plott asked Takahashi.
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“Oh, are we already talking about that?” Takahashi responded. “Sir, it’s a tease! It’s the big elephant in the room. What is a show if we’re not teasing a little bit?” She promised to get back to it later before moving on with the broadcast.
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This of course set off a firestorm of conversation across social media. There’s still a lot of secrecy surrounding next-generation gaming consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, so it was a surprise that a Twitch host would have one so prominently displayed during what was, let’s be honest, not a huge deal of an event. Even Mr. Summer of Games himself Geoff Keighley commented on it during his parallel stream of the show, though he seemed less amused by Twitch’s antics.
Viewers quickly split into two groups: those who believed the PS5 was real and those who didn’t. Folks in the fake camp also floated the idea that it could be a cake, referencing a popular meme from earlier this year. It wasn’t until two hours later, when Takahashi brought the object into the foreground and sliced into it with a samurai sword, that their theories would be validated.
“I think that it is using probably the most state-of-the-art plastic that you can use for a console,” Takahashi joked before completely demolishing it with her blade.
Yep, it was a fake. Looking a little desperate there, Twitch.
Twitch metrics tracker SullyGnome indicates that, around the time the faux PS5’s delicious interior was revealed, around 10,000 viewers left the stream. Fans are hungry to learn anything they can about the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, and will apparently even tune into a boring awards show for the possibility of seeing just a little more about these machines before they arrive this holiday season.