The Social Presence of NBA 2K11

On the day before NBA 2K11 was set to hit stores I noted what an unprecedented wave of discussion had begun taking place in social channels. That has continued throughout the entire release week. Kotaku was able to get details on just how significant a presence the game has been enjoying on Twitter.

NBA 2K11 has been a “Trending Topic” on the social messaging platform (make sure to follow me on there) every day since Monday and that now includes today as well. It was able to stay in the list for 57 consecutive hours at one point which is rare for any topic let alone a video game. The calculation considering the total number of tweets being over 230K means that a new message about the game is being posted around once every second.

Michael Jordan’s involvement surely drove much of the discussion and it grew out of that, but tweets by extremely influential celebrities on the platform extended it beyond just typical game talk. No other sports game has received this much attention on Twitter and that includes Madden 11 which I did not notice reach the Trending Topics a single time despite its popularity. There is just that a remarkable level of excitement about what the game is offering this year which takes it to a level that few games even have the potential of reaching.

Prior to release it was primarily anticipation but since then it has been more about sharing in the experience. It will be interesting to see how much it all translates to sales, which certainly will be up a significant amount but could even break through the ceiling of what has been thought possible for a basketball game to achieve.