Who won E3? It’s a question that gamers are always desperate to debate as soon as the dust settles and the annual videogame expo comes to a close.
This year, Facebook worked with social media monitor Pulsar to try and answer that very question, and the answer may surprise you.
Nah, I’m just kidding – it was Sony. I’ve never been a fan of picking winners at E3 myself, but I didn’t need to analyse any social media data to work out who had the most talked about press conference.
Facebook worked with Pulsar to track conversations about E3 on the social media site from June 7 to June 14, focusing on the publishers who hosted a press conference at the show (plus Nintendo).
It would seem that Sony had the largest share of voice among publishers who hosted a press conference. They bagged over 30 percent of the conversation throughout the brunt of the E3 period. Take a look:
This was probably helped by both the volume of Sony’s announcements, and the actual games they revealed. God of War 4 and Crash Bandicoot were always bound to get people talking, while announcements like a new Spider-Man game and Days Gone went down a treat.
Facebook found that the most talked about games were God of War 4, Titanfall 2, and (bizarrely) Elder Scrolls: Legends, the card game spinoff.
The hottest games in the week leading up to E3 were The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Watch Dogs 2, and once again (for some reason), Elder Scrolls: Legends. Seriously, what’s up with that? Did everyone think it was a core release or something?
All this videogame chit chat on Facebook climbed tenfold on Sunday, tripled on Monday, and peaked on Tuesday.
As you might have expected, males accounted for 72 percent of this noise, with a fairly equal split between 18-24 and 25-34 year-olds.
Do bear in mind that these stats only account for conversations over Facebook, and is in no way representative of games that trended on other social media sites.
For another perspective, BrandWatch found Microsoft to be the most talked about publisher, with Zelda the top game. However, that only accounts for about 10% of social media chatter.
Of course, even though Sony gobbled up 30 percent of Facebook chat, nowhere does it specify that it was all good – it could have been people talking about how wank Sony’s conference was.
I mean, we all know that probably wasn’t the case, but it never hurts to consider all angles.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.