This year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo is over, but it certainly left quite an impact on the industry, with several big titles set for release over the next year and beyond. With that, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has reported that the show just had its biggest attendance yet.
A story from GamesIndustry International indicates that attendance of this year’s event has reached a record high, with 52,200 people visiting from over 100 countries worldwide. This includes enthusiasts who were invited to the industry-only event at the first time, representing a “prosumer” piece of the market.
More than 1,600 products from 300 exhibitors were on full display for all to see, and social media saw a tremendous jump as well, with over 6.3 million posts related to the show on Twitter, and over 7.5 million likes with E3-related posts on Instagram.
Video played a big part as well, as we previously reported with Twitch. More than one half million concurrent viewers tuned in to the press conferences on the live streaming channel, while YouTube garnered its own audience with over one million E3-related videos on its site.
“More than any other E3, this year was about the gamer. E3 demonstrated both the remarkable transformation of entertainment taking place on all video game platforms-virtual reality, augmented reality, hardware, mobile and handheld-and awesome games,” said Michael D. Gallagher, president and CEO of ESA. “As a driving force for technological and entertainment trends across the globe, the video game industry clearly demonstrated how it is revolutionizing the way people consume, engage and interact with media. Congratulations to our incredibly creative exhibitors, members, partners and the millions of video game consumers who celebrated a spectacular E3 event.”
The promise of next year’s event is building as well, especially with Nintendo’s forthcoming NX console and new releases from Sony and Microsoft, such as The Last Guardian and Gears of War 4, respectively. It will once again return to the Los Angeles Convention Center, taking place from June 14-16. Of course, we’ll be there…