Analyst: Assassin's Creed, Nintendo Top E3 Consumer Interest

Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Nintendo products including The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword led online E3 consumer interest, according to research firm EEDAR. The firm said the data comes from the actions of over 10 million gamers. Product interest during E3 often is used as a barometer of which games and hardware will be most popular during the holiday season and beyond. EEDAR, which partnered with IGN GamerMetrics and GameTrailers.com on the report, found that Nintendo led all other publishers in page views during E3 last week, with a 16 percent share of total views. Microsoft followed in second place with 10 percent, while Sony was in fourth place with 9 percent. Drawing from GameTrailers' streaming video stats, EEDAR found that Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood led with over 813,000 media views. Konami's Metal Gear Solid: Rising was also a popular title, coming in second place with over 789,000 views. EEDAR said only one game in IGN's GamerMetrics database broke 2 million page views -- Nintendo's newly-annnounced Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for Wii, which garnered 2.01 million views. Microsoft's Kinect body-recognizing camera followed closely behind with over 1.9 million views. While page views may signify an interest in a product, purchase intent from IGN GamerMetrics stats tell a different story. Leading all other products during E3 in purchase intent was Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, followed by Nintendo's Donkey Kong Country Returns. Activision and Treyarch's high-profile Call of Duty: Black Ops came in third. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, which led in page views, ranked eighth in purchase intent. Not showing up on the purchase intent top 20 were Microsoft's Kinect or PlayStation 3's Move controllers, even though core gamers do have a high awareness of the devices. EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich said that low purchase intent does not mean the devices will fail. "EEDAR does not believe the low purchase intent rankings are an indication of a potential poor performance at retail, as page views and overall interest remains high for the Move and Kinect. Purchase intent will likely rise as we get closer to their respected release dates and as more details about upcoming games are released," he wrote. Divnich added, "EEDAR believes the success of the Move and Kinect will largely be attributed to how they market their peripherals and games to the mass-market audience, an audience that typically does not keep up on the latest reviews, news, and previews of upcoming video games." The Nintendo 3DS impressed E3 show-goers who spent hands-on time with the portable, but it didn't make the top 20 list of purchase intent and ranked low on GameTrailers media views. Divnich said that this is a result of the 3D effect not being able to be conveyed through normal online methods. He said, "While certainly a challenge, EEDAR points to the widespread and record-breaking success of Avatar at the box office, which had a similar problem; however in the end, the curiosity of consumers got the best of them and resulted in Avatar breaking nearly every single box office record to date." Below are the full charts released by EEDAR: