1. Gears of War (Microsoft) 2. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Nintendo) 3. Madden NFL 07 (Electronic Arts) 4. Halo 3 (Microsoft) 5. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (Activision) 6. Fight Night Round 3 (Electronic Arts) 7. Call of Duty 3 (Activision) 8. Assassin's Creed (Ubisoft) 9. Resistance: Fall of Man (Sony) 10. Tony Hawk's Project 8 (Activision)The BrandIntel gaming report provides research, marketing, communications and customer relationship management departments with actionable information to support decision-making through a better understanding of consumer usage behavior as well as industry trends and influences. The report highlights the video games and manufacturers that have generated the most positive discussion and sentiment in online consumer communities such as message boards, discussion forums, blogs and other social communities on the Internet. BrandIntel's LinkMap tracked over 670,000 raw search results on the Internet but refined those results through technological filters and human analysis to utilize only the highest quality data for this study -- totaling over 48,000 consumer mentions on next-gen video games. Rankings were determined by highest percent of discussion share, with sentiment scores serving as a secondary indicator of placement on the list. The study breaks consumers down into the hardcore community -- consumers that post on game-oriented sites, and the casual community, or the consumers that post comments on websites that include video game discussion, but also have other areas of interest. In addition, the games appearing in the research are new or yet-to-be-released, providing sales analysts with a more comprehensive view of consumer demand and overall brand quality opinion. Additional key findings from the study include:
-- Gamers are currently moving away from the redundancies of WWII
shooters game play and presentation, and are showing rising interest in
futuristic shooters such as "Gears of War" (#1) and "Halo 3" (#4).
-- Action/adventure games generated the highest discussion share due to
their typical open-ended game play and highly-interactive environments.
-- Sports games, although discussed at a high level, received criticisms
by both hardcore and casual gamers alike about its inaccurate and
unrealistic game play.
"While traditional gaming reports tend to focus on post-purchase consumer
feedback, our report gathers discussions from online communities that
provide both hardcore and casual gamers an open forum to express their
opinions on new or yet-to-be-released games, therefore generating
conversations even before some of the games are released," said Bradley
Silver, president of BrandIntel. "The ability to track and analyze online
consumer discussion and sentiment allows organizations the ability to gain
better insight into consumer perception of a brand. Armed with a
heightened awareness of consumer sentiments, gaming executives are then
able to identify emerging trends and make better-informed business
decisions as a result."
Using award-winning Internet monitoring technology combined with the power
of human analysis, BrandIntel detects, analyzes and generates intelligence
on tens of thousands of relevant comments about video games on a daily
basis. The company scans the entire scope of the Internet and analyzes the
most pertinent content to measure for assigned sentiment scores and share
of discussion, rating the physical and emotional value of the results
(positive or negative) to produce the relevant categorization records of
information in all its reports.
This "Top 50 Video Game Report" follows the June 2006 "E3Gaming Report," in
which BrandIntel tracked and analyzed online gaming community discussions
around video games launched at E3.
To view a summary of the report and full listing of the top 50 video games,
visit www.brandintel.com.
About BrandIntel (www.brandintel.com)
BrandIntel, a Brandimensions Inc. company, translates online
consumer-published content into reliable intelligence, enabling businesses
to advance the science of decision making. The company offers an
information-delivery platform combining human intelligence with
award-winning technology for the most trusted market data in the industry.
The BrandIntel data helps businesses validate critical business decisions,
uncover new opportunities for value creation, and get closer to customers.
BrandIntel works with Fortune 1000 companies and is headquartered in
Toronto, Canada, with offices in the United States.
Contact Information: CONTACTS: Alicia Libucha Lois Paul & Partners 781-782-5703 alicia_libucha@lpp.com Maxine Friedman BrandIntel 646-202-9387 mfriedman@brandintel.com