Engagement Labs has released its TotalSocial ranking of consumer electronics brands for 2018, revealing that PlayStation climbed to the number one spot for positive consumer conversations. Parent company Sony also made the top ten, rising five spots over last year.

Social conversations about a brand are vital for awareness and gauging sentiment. Engagement Labs found that nearly 30 percent of electronics purchases are explained by consumer conversations, and more than half of the impact comes from face-to-face and voice-to-voice conversation.

“It’s counter-intuitive but also true that offline conversation is extremely important to technology brands,” said Ed Keller, CEO of Engagement Labs.

In addition to a number of exclusive video game titles, PlayStation has benefited from conversations both online and off about Fortnite. Further buzz was generated by a PS4/Fortnite bundle kit released in August.

“In consumer electronics, social performance sometimes is driven by having the hottest or newest toy, as we are seeing with Playstation’s Fortnite game,” observed Keller. “But it also helps to have widespread adoption and use, which are key to the social success of Kindle, Samsung, and Bose.”

Kindle rose one spot from last year to take second place, followed by Samsung, which also rose one position. Bose rose five spots in the last six months and is now sitting pretty at number five, just under Apple. Following the release of its new noise-canceling headphones, Bose experienced a rise in both online and offline sentiment, along with online brand sharing on social media.

Apple tumbled out of the top spot to land at number four. Engagement Labs admits, however, that the company’s brands collectively dominate consumer conversation.

“If all of Apple’s brands were combined into a single score, the parent brand—which recently became the first publicly traded company to reach $1 trillion in value—would easily dominate the number one position,” says the report.

Nintendo didn’t fare as well in the last six months, dropping three spots to number 10 on the TotalSocial ranking. Engagement Labs attributed this to a lackluster E3 performance that took its toll on online and offline influence.

The biggest drop was experienced by Asus, however, plummeting 17 spots to number 22.

The top 10 TotalSocial Consumer Electronic Brands Are:

  • PlayStation
  • Kindle
  • Samsung
  • Apple
  • Bose
  • Xbox
  • Sony
  • Roku
  • Nintendo
  • LG