E3 2011 social media monitoring report

E3 social media monitoring report

Which games, publishers and developers grabbed the attention

this year?

E3 social media report

Welcome to the Five by Five social media report on the E3 2011 conference.

We thought it would be interesting to see which titles, publishers and platforms made the most noise at this year’s event in terms of mentions/posts on social media sites.

We used Brandwatch to trawl for mentions of E3 and then focused on the social media type sites of blogs, video, forums and Twitter.

We restricted the date range to 7th - 9th June in order to filter out the pre-event buzz.

They was double counting, but that is unavoidable, and we used Twitter only for the sentiment results.

The event is all about reveals, demos and announcements so lets see who’s new ‘baby’ generated the most ‘buzz’.

Summary

During the three days of the event there were 160,000 mentions on social media sites.

It is being reported that there were over 46,000 visitors to the event, which equates to more than 3 mentions per visitor.

To place this volume in context the Royal Wedding generated 865k mentions and the Champions League Final 408k.

The big 5 presenters

Normally it is only the three big platform holders (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft) that deliver press conferences at the event, but this year they were joined by two publishers on the main stage and this is how they fared:

Nintendo

Sony

Microsoft

EA

Ubisoft

0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000 30,000 35,000

30,411

25,329

15,426

8,556

5,709


This was the sentiment for each of the top 5 presenters, taken exclusively from Twitter:

Nintendo

Sony

Microsoft

EA

Ubisoft

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

34%

30%

33%

34%

34%

40%

46%

44%

47%

40%

26%

24%

23%

19%

26%

PositiveNeutralNegative

There wasn’t much to chose between them. The one surprising result is that Sony’s apology for the Playstation network outages didn’t garner more positive sentiment


To place those results in context, here’s what people were talking about:

• Launch of Wii U• Line up of games

for 3DS – Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, Luigi’s Mansion and Mario Kart

• Apology from CEO Jack Tretton for network outages

• Launch of Playstation Vita

• Success of PSP: 70m sold worldwide

• Dust 514 (EVE)• Resistance 3

• Previews and announcements of games designed to work with Kinect

• Halo 4 announcement

• Bing voice search• Wireless speed

wheel• GoW 3 limited

edition Xbox 360• Live TV

• EA Sports games to be enhanced by Kinect

• Battlefield 3 demo• The Sims on

Facebook• EA to support Wii U• Mass Effect 3

demo• Star Wars: TOR• New EA store:

Origin

• New Brothers in Arms game

• Far Cry 3• Assassins Creed:

Revelations• Just Dance 3 with

Kinect• Rocksmith• Killer Freaks from

Outer space• Ghost Recon

Online

The platforms

In terms of the four main platforms this is how often they were mentioned in direct connection to E3:

Playstation

Xbox

Wii

Nintendo 3DS

0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000 30,000

26,992

24,108

22,050

4,533

The platforms

This was the sentiment for each of the top platforms, again, taken exclusively from Twitter:

Xbox

Playstation

Wii

Nintendo 3DS

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

63%

34%

36%

12%

14%

41%

35%

70%

22%

25%

29%

19%


The most startling figure here is the 63% sentiment towards the Xbox, which is due in part to the new games featuring the Kinect and the Gears of War 3 limited edition Xbox 360.

The new platforms

There were two new gaming platforms launched at the event, and one, Kinect, which had already been released, but was heavily showcased.

Wii U

Kinect

Playstation Vita

0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,000

13,178

10,728

4,890

The new platforms

In terms of sentiment its clear that, despite it already being released, the new functionality and promise of games for the Kinect were well received.

Wii U

Kinect

Playstation Vita

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

20%

38%

10%

63%

37%

73%

17%

25%

17%


The publishers

So, taking the big 5 presenters out of the picture, how did the other major publishers at the event compare?

Activision

SEGA

THQ

Square Enix

Konami

Disney

Bethesda

Namco Bandai

Warner Bros

Codemasters

2K games

0 200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200 1,400 1,600 1,800 2,000

1,862

1,715

1,704

1,213

1,174

1,171

810

467

328

269

177

The publishers

For the publishers the sentiment from Twitter looked like this:

THQ

Activision

SEGA

Bethesda

Konami

Square Enix

Disney

Namco Bandai

Codemasters

2K games

Warner Bros

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

45%

33%

26%

48%

49%

48%

41%

45%

32%

33%

27%

36%

48%

41%

26%

36%

42%

48%

36%

52%

56%

45%

19%

19%

33%

26%

16%

10%

11%

18%

16%

11%

27%


The top titles

So which games and their demos/trailers were setting the pulses racing on the expo floor?

Battlefield 3

Modern Warfare 3

Mass Effect 3

Halo 4

Elder Scrolls V :Skyrim

Uncharted 3

Bioshock: Infinite

The Legend of Zelda

Gears of War 3

Batman: Arkham City

Tomb Raider

Resistance 3

Need for Speed The Run

0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000

5,882

4,866

4,698

4,314

4,277

3,873

3,619

2,889

2,822

2,649

2,422

2,300

1,947

The top titles

In terms of the sentiment in Twitter for the top titles we can see that Tomb Raider, Batman: Arkham City, Halo 4, Bioshock Infinite and Elder Scrolls V made the best impression

Elder Scrolls V

Modern Warfare 3

Mass Effect 3

Battlefield 3

Bioshock

Uncharted 3

Halo 4

Gears of War 3

Arkham City


Tomb Raider

Resistance 3

The Legend of Zelda

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

55%

42%

45%

43%

64%

50%

54%

37%

68%

44%

70%

49%

48%

25%

33%

35%

39%

23%

35%

28%

28%

21%

28%

20%

32%

35%

20%

25%

20%

18%

13%

16%

19%

35%

11%

28%

10%

19%

16%


Genres

We’ve gone into some detail on the different genres of games on show at E3 and how the different titles compare. The top titles were either FPS, RPGs or Action/Adventure titles.

Battlefield 3

Halo 4

Gears of War 3

Ghost Recon Future Soldier

Aliens Colonial Marines

Darkness 2

0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000

First Person Shooters

Genres

Uncharted 3

The Legend of Zelda

Batman: Arkham City

Tomb Raider

Journey

Ninja Gaiden 3

Assassins Creed Revelations

Hitman absolution

Prototype 2

0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 4,000

Action/Adventure


Forza 4

Driver

0 200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200 1,400 1,600 1,800 2,000

Driving games

Genres

Mass Effect 3

Elder Scrolls V

Deus Ex Human Revolution

The Witcher 2

Bastion

0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 4,000 4,500 5,000

RPGs

Metal Gear

Starhawk

Saints Row 3

0 200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200

Third Person Shooters

Further mapping

We then looked to see how the volume of mentions and the % of positive sentiment on Twitter positioned the 5 different presenters and the platforms (new and old).

0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 350000%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

NintendoPlaystation

Sony

Xbox

WiiMicrosoft

Wii U

KinectEA

Ubisoft

Playstation Vita

Nintendo 3DS

Mentions vs Positive sentiment

Mentions

% p

ositi

ve se

ntim

ent

Further mapping

We then looked to see how the volume of mentions and the % of positive sentiment on Twitter positioned top titles:

1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000 5500 6000 65000%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

MW3

Mass Effect 3Halo 4

Elder Scrolls V

Uncharted 3

Bioshock

Legend of Zelda

Gears of War 3

Arkham CityTomb Raider

Resistance 3

Need for Speed Battlefield 3

Mentions vs Positive sentiment

Mentions

% p

ositi

ve se

ntim

ent

Winners and losers

Taking a bit of a liberty then, based on what we’ve found here, we’ve constructed a cheeky winners and losers list:

Winners Why? Losers Why?

Nintendo Launch of Wii U Sony Playstation Vita underwhelmed

EA Battlefield 3, Mass Effect 3, Kinect games Activision No press conference

Microsoft Kinetic generating excitement, Halo 4 Driving game Lack of interest

First Person Shooters Still generating most interest PC gaming No sign of comeback

RPGs Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Bethesda Despite interest in Skyrim, 9th place in publisher chart

Square Enix New Tomb Raider well received THQ Saints Row 3 generated little interest

Business

E3 2011 social media monitoring report