According to a social media analysis from Brandwatch, VR is finally filtering through to the collective consciousness following one of the most VR-heavy mainstream conferences to date.
Breaking through to the top 70 most popular games discussed on social media during E3, four VR games seemed to make a big impression on game enthusiasts world-wide: Batman Arkham VR (Rocksteady Studios), Star Trek: Bridge Crew (Ubisoft), Eagle Flight (Ubisoft), and Farpoint (Impulse Gear) are the most talked about VR games of E3, in that order.
The graph gives a brief insight into what piques the interest of the Internet (erroneous personification aside), and it seems like big, well-established IPs rank the highest. Not a big surprise here.
Eagle Flight and Impulse Gear’s Farpoint are newly created IP – from very different sources however.
Ubisoft has been openly showing their multi-player feathered flight sim for quite a while now, and have most recently opened up a new portion of their Paris level for E3 demoers – so no real extreme change here in terms of content since the version we saw at GDC earlier this year. Since Eagle Flight isn’t new or substantively modified, it’s possible that it saw an increase in notoriety thanks to the studio’s recently revealed Star Trek: Bridge Crew.
Farpoint from Impulse Gear, a newly revealed IP and studio, saw some Internet points for the simultaneous reveal of the Sony’s new Aim Controller, a purpose-built peripheral for PS4’s Move camera. It was heavily featured by Sony at both their press booth and massive dedicated floor space for general attendees, and also an around bug-squishing good time.
We can’t really count Fallout 4 in place number 24 on the list – the most talked about game coming soon to VR headsets – because the data isn’t granular enough to see whether it was the newly announced DLC packs or the new VR version slated to arrive in 2017 that drove netizens to social media.
So it looks like VR is on the up-and-up, even if we kind of already knew that.