E3 2016 is just around the corner, and Twitter is seeing tremendous buzz about the show. The reason for that is, as it turns out, a good portion of its audience are gamers.
Twitter recently posted on its blog discussing how big its gaming demographic is and explained that nearly 84 million tweets last year were focused on video games, which is approximately 230,000 a day.
“In fact, gaming’s popularity is anything but a game, as 65 percent of Twitter users say they play video games, and 55 percent of those users say they regularly play console games,” wrote Gleana Albritton, industry marketing lead for media & entertainment, who co-authored the blog entry.
The true high point for game conversation came with the E3 2015 show, in which there were 740,000 tweets a day, reacting to the big reveals and announcements. Most reveals come in the form of trailers, and Twitter users love trailers. The chart below shows the spike in traffic between a game release and a trailer drop. The game launch day is the biggest highlight, but reactions to trailers closely match, and there’s plenty of activity in the days leading to its release and during the days that follow.
Twitter also noted that popularity of games on its social site actually translates very well to game sales, as 85 percent of users are likely to spend money on video games, versus 76 percent of non-Twitter gamers.
The chart also points out that Twitter gamers are 1.25 times more likely to spend over $100 on video games per year, compared to non-Twitter gamers. A different breakdown also said about the same for consoles, with gamers 1.2 times more likely to buy video games for consoles over non-Twitter gamers.
“Gaming audiences like to stay up-to-date on all the latest equipment as well, “Albritton noted. “A whopping 78 percent of them researched a game or console as a result of following a gaming handle. Of these followers, 81 percent own a console and 53 percent bought one in the past 12 months. Nearly 40 percent of them intend to buy a gaming console in the next year.”
So, between huge gaming buzz during trade shows, release of games, and general chatter about what’s been announced and what’s coming, video games are getting a ton of traction on Twitter. All the more reason for Twitter to have a devoted gaming channel.
