Battlefield 2042, Riders Republic and Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 most watched trailers at E3 2021

The Battlefield 2042 gameplay trailer was the most-watched trailer at E3 2021 and looks to have come top of the show, at least when it comes to eyes on the game. 

Battlefield 2042's gameplay trailer, which aired during the Microsoft and Bethesda Games Showcase this weekend was viewed a staggering 6.5 million in just 3 days. The massive scale of the battles on show seems to have captured audiences, and it's a fairly positive sign that this could be the game to beat this holiday period. 

The list of viewer numbers comes from a thread on Resetera that compiled all the views of the games shown this weekend and ranked them. It's worth keeping in mind that these numbers are only from the official channels hosting the trailers, rather than regional .  

Perhaps surprisingly, Ubisoft's Riders Republic was the second most-viewed of the show. Debuting at the publisher's press conference on Saturday, the trailer has now surpassed 4 million views.  It's a very strong opening for the game, a massively multiplayer online title that'll give players a playground of outdoors sports to compete in. From bikes, gliders, snowboards and more, this extreme sports sandbox has obviously struck a chord with viewers.

Coming in third is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel which has garnered over 3.1 million views. However, to the game's credit, it's hit that in less than a day. It's running at a bit of a disadvantage compared to the two leaders just due to time. It's entirely possible the Breath of the Wild sequel see itself atop of this list in a week or so. 

Behind the top three games, Starfield is sitting at 2.9 million views, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora saw 2.5 million, Forza Horizon 5 with 2.5 million and Elden Ring has 2.4 million.

Interestingly, Halo Infinite is lagging quite far behind the other games, although it's showcase was split into two. Both its game overview trailer and multiplayer trailer have 1.1 million views each. 

Another interesting surprise is that Square Enix's Marvel's Avengers Expansion, War for Wakanda, is beating out its other Marvel announcement, Guardians of the Galaxy by nearly 100k views. Perhaps there is life yet still in the Avengers game. 

Of course, this is an imperfect science. As stated, these are not views brought together by every channel hosting them, which could skew things a little differently. It's also possible that some of these trailers have been playing as ads, boosting their numbers. The view counts also don't account for games being announced at different times. However, they act as a temperature check for early reception to E3 2021. 

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