Modern Warfare 3, Activision’s latest first-person shooter, was predicted to be the top-selling video game despite healthy competition from EA’s Battlefield 3 released in October. Those predictions are coming true as several sources have claimed that Modern Warfare 3 is on par to break first week sales records.

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations around both games online.

Battlefield 3 vs. Modern Warfare 3

Modern Warfare 3 mentions spiked this week, but so far have not surpassed Battlefield 3 mentions.

Battlefield 3 sentiment

Conversations around Battlefield 3 have been 71% positive online.

Modern Warefare 3 sentiment

Conversations around Modern Warfare 3 have been 81% positive online.

Content category distribution

Battlefield 3 is being mentioned more often via Twitter, while Modern Warfare 3 has more mentions via blogs.

How will online buzz translate to sales?

Nintendo reported yesterday plans to cut the price of its Wii console to $150 as soon as May 15. Over the past year, Wii sales have slowed considerably. Nintendo revealed earlier this year that it sold about 7 million Wii units in the U.S. in 2010. It had sold more than 10 million units in 2008 and about 9 million units in 2009. The Wii has trailed the Xbox 360 so far this year in overall sales.

Wii chatter

The price drop generated a small increase in chatter. However, we noticed a much higher spike in chatter around Wii conversations on April 25. Further analysis showed us that Nintendo announced plans to release Wii 2 in 2012 that day.

Wii vs. PlayStation vs. Xbox

As we posted yesterday, PlayStation has been facing increased negative buzz due to its hacked PlayStation Network. Regardless, Xbox has generated the highest amount of buzz overall throughout the last month.

As we move into day 11 of the PlayStation Network fiasco, Sony continues to rebuild its beleaguered network while apologizing profusely to users.

Sony believes hackers obtained user account information, including home addresses, email addresses, birth dates, usernames and passwords and potentially even credit card numbers.

PlayStation chatter

Apparently some users don’t appreciate what they have until its gone. Chatter around PlayStation is up 79% as more news about the outage is revealed.

PlayStation sentiment

PlayStation sentiment, which is generally between 80-90% positive, spiked up to 65% negative.

XBox sentiment

Meanwhile, XBox sentiment is currently 81% positive. Can Microsoft XBox capitalize on Sony’s PlayStation Network woes and steal market share?

Facebook continues to become one of the most important platforms for brands to engage. The Next Web published a list of the top 25 most ‘liked’ brands on Facebook. Do more Facebook ‘likes’ mean increased chatter for brands online? We used Social Radar to run analysis on Web chatter around each of these brands in 2010. Compare the lists below.

Interestingly, there seems to be little correlation between which brands have the most Facebook ‘likes’ and which brands are being talked about most online.

The chart below contains the brands ranked in order of most Facebook ‘likes’, with bars representing online chatter.

The Social Radar Top 50 measures the brands with the most active Web presence based on overall online conversation volume. To create the Top 50 list, we used Social Radar to analyze millions of blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts to aggregate a list of the words and brands mentioned most frequently on the Web during all of 2008 and 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during 2009 rather than the overall number of mentions, which would be more heavily influenced by big fans who post frequently about a specific brand.

This year has certainly been interesting. Several new brands made their way to the mainstream making our 2009 Top 50 list, such as Kindle, Amazon’s hit e-book reader, and Android, Google’s mobile OS that is spreading onto smartphones like wildfire. Interestingly, Samsung and Nokia took a big hit this year, as sexier smartphones such as iPhones and Android-powered devices from HTC and Motorola gain more attention.

The list certainly shows that 2009 was the year of Social Media. Twitter moved ahead of Google to take the number 1 spot, while Facebook and MySpace made significant leaps over big brands as well. Most video game related brands were down this year as well, including Sony, Wii, Xbox, and Nintendo. It also appears TV brands all jumped this year including Disney, MTV, Fox, BBC, CNN, ESPN, and ABC.

Download the PDF:

View the full list below, or download the PDF. For additional information about how you can analyze chatter sentiment to gauge positivity/negativity, view key words mentioned about your brand and identify key influencers, visit www.infegy.com/socialradar.

Social Radar Screenshot:

Questions or comments? Twitter me @adamcoomes.

The September 2009 Social Radar Top 50 measures the brands with the most active Web presence based on overall online conversation volume. To create the Top 50 list, we used Social Radar to analyze millions of blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts to aggregate a list of the words and brands mentioned most frequently on the Web during September 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during September 2009 rather than the overall number of mentions, which would be more heavily influenced by big fans who post frequently about a specific brand.

Twitter falls a bit, but still takes top spot. LG’s new BL20 Chocolate helped LG jump 11 spots. NFL rises again this month as the NFL season heats up. MTV jumps 13 spots due to buzz around the MTV Video Music awards. AT&T’s announcement of MMS support on the iPhone raised AT&T’s position up 5 spots.

View the full list below, or download the PDF. For additional information about how you can analyze chatter sentiment to gauge positivity/negativity, view key words mentioned about your brand and identify key influencers, visit www.infegy.com/socialradar.

Questions or comments? Twitter me @adamcoomes.

The June 2009 Social Radar Top 50 measures the brands with the most active Web presence based on overall online conversation volume. To create the Top 50 list, we used Social Radar to analyze millions of blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts to aggregate a list of the words and brands mentioned most frequently on the Web during June 2009. The list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during May 2009 rather than the overall number of mentions, which would be more heavily influenced by big fans who post frequently about a specific brand.

Twitter held on to the top spot, though once again trending down this month. iPhone jumped two spots to #2 overall and Apple jumped three spots to #6 thanks to buzz around the iPhone 3G S release.

Firefox jumped 10 spots thanks to increased chatter leading up to its new Firefox 3.5 release, which was downloaded more than a million times within a few hours.

XBox jumped 5 spots to #11 overall after the Project Natal announcement at Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Surprisingly, with both the Project Natal and Bing search engine announcements this month, overall Microsoft buzz only increased one spot to #9 overall.

CNN jumped 13 spots, due in large part to a steep surge surrouding the news of Michael Jackson’s death. MLB jumped eight spots as the baseball season heated up in the month of June.

Finally, HTC joined the Top 50 this month, with talk about its new widget-based HTC Hero Android smartphone announcement.

View the full list below, or download the PDF. For additional information about how you can analyze chatter sentiment to gauge positivity/negativity, view key words mentioned about your brand and identify key influencers, visit www.infegy.com/socialradar.

Questions or comments? Twitter me @adamcoomes.

E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) has concluded and we have analyzed the most discussed announcements from the show.  Microsoft’s motion-tracking Project Natal unsurprisingly took the top spot followed with the PSP Go.  Metal Gear Solid, the most discussed game, came in third.  Some other notable mentions are Gran Turismo 5 versus Forza 3, for which GT5 generated the most chatter.  Also, Scribblenauts is quite far down the list, but today the game as been generating a strong upsurge in mentions and we expect this one to get a bit more attention over the next few days.

Wednesday we posted a sentiment comparison between Project Natal and the PS3 motion-tracking controller you can see here.

The full top listing is in the chart after the jump, displayed by the percentage of E3 discussions mentioning that announcement.  The Top 10 is in the image below:

Top 10:

Continue reading…

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is wrapping up in Los Angeles. At their respective keynotes, both Microsoft and Sony made major announcements in a similar vain.  Microsoft presented their Project Natal, a camera-based device which can track full body motion without needing a controller. Shortly after, Sony demonstrated a prototype high-precision motion tracking controller for the Playstation 3.  Both exciting and impressive in different ways.

We decided to see the web’s reaction to these announcements, and threw the Wii Motion Plus accessory in for comparison.  MotionPlus is an add-on coming for the Nintendo Wii controllers which improves their motion tracking accuracy and capabilities.

Project Natal had the most positive response. Additionally, in regards to overall conversation volume, it had around three times what Sony’s motion controller generated.  Interestingly, after these announcements, we saw a notable increase in negative chatter around the Wii Motion Plus, with negativity increasing around 8%. This is attributed to users seeing these new developments as superior to Nintendo’s long-time-coming accessory.