Dive Brief:
- Facebook will have a bigger presence at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) as the social network seeks more ways to engage its audience of gamers. More than 800 million people play at least one Facebook-connected game every month, VentureBeat reported.
- Facebook’s booth at E3, held at the Los Angeles Convention Center on June 13-15, will carry the slogan “Raise Your Game” and will demonstrate how the social network can be used to view and share content with other videogame enthusiasts.
- The company’s Facebook Live Studio will stream live content of gaming personality Andrea Rene conducting interviews with game developers, marketers and special guests at the expo. Facebook pages of participating publishers and the Facebook Gameroom page will also broadcast the live content.
Dive Insight:
Facebook has made a bigger push into TV programming this year for both gaming and entertainment broadcasts. Its app for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Samsung’s Smart TV promises to let viewers capture and share video with their friends online. More than 30 million people have connected a Facebook account to Sony’s PlayStation Network or Microsoft’s Xbox Live, according to VentureBeat, signaling a massive audience of gamers potentially tuning into this year's E3 event.
Gamers appear ready to embrace Facebook as a social nexus with more than 15% of all users' time spent on gaming on the website itself. Meanwhile, more than 450 million Facebook users followed or liked an official gaming page in the last month. More than 500,000 people follow the Facebook page for E3, which allows people to comment or react to news updates related to the upcoming trade show.
Facebook and the gaming industry have seen their share of fads with companies like Zynga experiencing a growth spurt before reversing dramatically. Millions of people shared games like Farmville, Mafia Wars and Cityville on Facebook until the novelty soon wore off. But it appears that Facebook still wants developers to flock to and thrive on its platform, given the large amounts of information on its website geared for marketing games. With its bigger push at E3, Facebook is likely aiming to grow its relationships with gamers and be the go-to social and video platform for videogame enthusiasts.