With E3 2017 now out of the way, it is time to reflect on the performance of the briefings, as well as what people took out of them. For Microsoft, it mostly revolves around its new console, the Xbox One X.
Initially announced at E3 2016 as Project Scorpio, it was set to be the first time a gaming console has taken the leap into native 4K, alongside HDR. Promising beasty specs and an experience like never seen before, Project Scorpio was really hyped up amongst the gaming community. In fact, if we look at Google News searches for ‘Project Scorpio’ since May 2016 until now, it is clear how the hype continued to grow – jumping in June 2016 for E3, then slowly growing ever since, until it jumped again in April 2017, followed by a further increase going into E3 2017, at which point it began to drop off after the official name became Xbox One X.
Now, the viewer statistics on the various E3 media briefings have been released, which puts Microsoft in the lead across the board, both on Twitch and YouTube. According to GitHyp, the Twitch views were as follows:
- Microsoft/Xbox — 1.1 million viewers (818k in 2016)
- Ubisoft — 986k viewers (759k in 2016)
- Sony/PlayStation — 962k viewers (757k in 2016)
- EA — 676k viewers (910k in 2016)
- PC Gaming Show — 552k viewers (488k in 2016)
- Nintendo — 292k viewers (422k in 2016)
- Bethesda — 233k viewers (610k in 2016)
Keep in mind: these are concurrent viewers.
Microsoft has continued its success by keeping its grip on YouTube, too. Bringing in over 2.3 million views on its Xbox YouTube channel alone, while Sony’s received around half of that, at 1.3 million.
The big question for Microsoft is – will this heightened success turn into sales figures that make a difference to current marketshare?
For that, we’ll have to wait and see.
