E3 is a huge event that fires up the gaming community every year.

Take it from games writer and narrative designer at KO_OP, Kate Gray:

“E3 is a big deal for two main reasons: One, it’s probably the biggest gaming event in the world, and two, it’s where all the news and announcements happen. Any game you’ve been patiently waiting to hear about for years happens here.”

As always, the Brandwatch React team has been following E3 in our own unique way – with social data. We’ve brought you updates on the highlights of each conference, the biggest moments and, of course, crowned the most talked about game as the winner of E3.

Stock up on coffee and pop corn and get ready for this buzzing games weekend. Jump to a conference here or start by enjoying our summary of the events. Our methodology is at the bottom of this page.

E3 2018: The conference in stats

  • We gathered 1,055,890 mentions of E3 2018 across social media
  • On Twitter, 77% of gender-categorized authors were male, 23% were female
  • The top mention game was Fallout 76 with more than 45,000 social media mentions across the E3 weekend
  • The top conference was Microsoft, which generated 187,140 mentions across the E3 weekend

Jump to a conference

  1. EA
  2. Microsoft
  3. Bethesda
  4. Square Enix
  5. Ubisoft
  6. Sony
  7. Nintendo

EA

Conference time: 11am – 12:30pm PT Saturday 9 June

  • 14,930 mentions overall
  • 82% of gender-categorized Twitter authors were male, 18% female
  • The moment that got the most mentions was the announcement that Unravel 2 would be out immediately
  • The top mentioned game was Anthem

Microsoft

Conference time: 1pm – 2:45pm PT Sunday 10 June

  • 56,190 mentions overall
  • 80% of gender-categorized Twitter authors were male, 20% female
  • The moment that got the most mentions was the very end of the show as analysis began and the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer was revealed
  • The top mentioned game was Kingdom Hearts

Bethesda

Conference time: 6:30pm – 8:00pm PT Sunday 10 June

  • 40,520 mentions overall
  • 75% of gender-categorized Twitter authors were male, 25% female
  • The moment that got the most mentions was the Elder Scrolls VI announcement
  • The top mentioned game was Fallout 76

Square Enix

Conference time: 10am – 10:30am PT Monday 11 June

  • 1,070 mentions overall
  • 73% of gender-categorized Twitter authors were male, 27% female
  • The moment that got the most mentions was the Dragon Quest announcement
  • The top mentioned game was Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Writer’s note: Square Enix’s short showcase didn’t get a huge amount of discussion on social – at some moments we weren’t picking up any conversation in our 10% sample of E3 mentions which is why the line dips to 0 at three points during the stream time. We also reduced the number of “top mentioned games” in this section since volumes were low.

Ubisoft

Conference time: 1pm-2:30pm PT Monday 11 June

  • 95,460 mentions overall
  • 76% of gender-categorized Twitter authors were male, 24% female
  • The moment was during the Starlink announcement
  • The top mentioned game was Beyond Good and Evil 2

Sony

Conference time: 6pm – 7:10pm PT Monday 11 June

  • 29,470 mentions overall
  • 74% of gender-categorized Twitter authors were male, 26% female
  • The moment that got the most mentions was the Resident Evil 2 announcement
  • The top mentioned game was Death Stranding

Nintendo

Conference time: 9am-9:40am PT Tuesday 12 June

  • 10,390 mentions overall
  • 72% of gender-categorized Twitter authors were male, 28% female
  • The top moment was the Fortnite for Switch announcement
  • The top mentioned game was Super Smash Bro’s

Methodology

Here’s how we came to the above conclusions. Please note our methodology is slightly different to last year so please do not make comparisons in terms of mention volumes.

All of our data for this blog post comes from a query set up in Brandwatch Analytics that tracks a 10% sample of public social media posts around E3 – our search terms include a huge variety E3 and conference-specific hashtags and keywords.

To track conference mentions, the Brandwatch React team identified conference-specific conversation that happened within our E3 query as described above.

To calculate the game mentions, the Brandwatch React team identified game-specific conversation that happened within our E3 query as described above. We tracked all games that were given a significant announcement at each major conference. The top games list for the full conference contains all games that we found generating more than 10,000 mentions throughout the E3 weekend.

A note on charts: The mention volumes in charts are the volumes we collect (on a 10% sample) x 10, so they reflect a more accurate number of mentions.

If you’re a journalist and are interested in receiving updates on the data, email us at [email protected] to be added to our E3 briefing list.