A new report has appeared, detailing the twenty most promising retail games of this year’s E3 conference. The results will (not) surprise you.
Electronic Entertainment Design & Research (henceforth EEDAR), which describes itself as “the leading provider of comprehensive contextual information for the worldwide video game industry,” compiled the list to aid retailers in determining which games were most likely to pull down huge sales numbers once they appear on store shelves.
To do so, EEDAR analyzed 78 million pageviews from the IGN network and 45 million “Media Views” from GameTrailers, accounting for the activities of over 20 million visitors. The thinking here, it seems, is that prospective gamers will take to the ‘net to research games they find interesting, especially following the massive media blowout of E3. EEDAR then compiled the data, and came up with a leaderboard of the upcoming games that people seem most interested in.
The list itself should come as no huge shock to anyone with an Internet connection and a passing interest in videogames. EEDAR has published the top 20 in its entirety, though realistically our clever, wildly attractive readership should be able to guess at the remaining titles after a glimpse at the top 5:
1. Mass Effect 3 – Electronic Arts – BioWare
2. Battlefield 3 – Electronic Arts – DICE
3. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Bethesda Softworks – Bethesda Game Studio
4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – Activision Blizzard – Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer & Treyarch
5. Assassin’s Creed Revelations – UbiSoft – UbiSoft Montreal
Additionally, the EEDAR report claims that Microsoft’s Xbox 360 commands the “highest awareness and purchase intent for its first and third party titles” and that Nintendo has “the highest awareness amongst all publishers.”
If you’re suddenly interested in which games are going to be saturating the adspace at your local GameStop for the next few months, have a look at the report in its entirety.
The really neat bit here is that the list cites games from throughout the industry, on almost every platform, and of almost every genre. It’s slightly weighted toward first person shooters, but that’s an inescapable trend in gaming. If nothing else, this list signals an incredibly healthy gaming industry, in which gamers have a vast selection of what to play and how to play it.
The inherent optimism is hard to miss.
