The biggest publishers did just fine without E3, says Superdata

As expected, video game fans followed AAA publishers about as well as this year as they’ve ever done, despite the lack of a proper E3.

Market analyst Superdata has revealed in a new report that viewership for showcase events from the biggest publishers and platform holders didn’t suffer in E3‘s absence this year.

According to Twitch viewership data, the majority of the biggest players saw a boost in engagement this year compared to last. The PS5 games event in June had “highest average minute audience” compared to 2019’s biggest showcases like The Game Awards, as well as Microsoft and Nintendo’s events last year. It was watched by around 1.5 million people every minute.

Ubisoft likewise found great success with the Forward showcase earlier this month, which had more viewers (1.02 million vs 0.75 million per minute) than its E3 2019 conference. Superdata says the free Watch Dogs 2 promotion likely helped. Not everyone was a winner, however. The PC Gaming Show saw a drop in viewers for this year’s show compared to last year’s.

The report goes on to point out that smaller and mid-size publishers stand to loose the most in the absence of a centralised event. The analyst didn’t share any specific data there, in part because the impact is harder to measure compared to single entities like Ubisoft.

Moving forward, Superdata expects smaller teams who traditionally enjoyed the boost in attention E3 brought, to partner up with the bigger players to get some of that attention.

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