The Internet a great way for us to see the stuff we couldn’t view in person. If you’re a statistician, that means additional great things. You can, theoretically, judge interest in new products based entirely on the number of views it receives.

Of course, this requires a couple of assumptions to be made (as most statistical analyses do). First off, you have to assume that interest and view count have a positive correlation – that is, that the more views something has, the more interest the public has in that thing as a whole. Not only that, but you also have to assume that the places you’re getting the view count information from (in this case, IGN and GameTrailers for sure, possibly a few more websites) have an audience that roughly resembles the gaming population as a whole.

EEDAR (Electronic Entertainment Design and Research) went ahead and performed the analyses necessary. (You can see full tables in the gallery at the conclusion of the article.) What did they find?

Well, first off, people are really excited about Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. (Read our hands-on here.) It took the top slot in both trailer views and the number of people who intend to purchase the game. It also looks like Nintendo’s Wii is picking up momentum once again. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword consistently ranked in the top 10 for purchase intent and view numbers (it was the only title to get more than two million pageviews), and occasionally, other Wii titles joined it. Despite the standard-definition graphics and occasional implication that the Wii is for casual gamers and shovelware lovers everywhere, it doesn’t look like the Wii is going away anytime soon, especially with good, solid “evergreen” titles coming back full force.

The folks at EEDAR were surprised to see that the Nintendo 3DS only landed in the 12th spot on the GameTrailers view count list. But is that really a mark against the handheld? Not really. The 3DS’ technology is something that can’t be easily replicated on a computer screen or television, after all. At least, not when it comes to live video. They noted that this will present an interesting conundrum for Nintendo when it comes to creating GameTrailers. They’ll either have to step the tech down a bit and create video for their games that doesn’t truly reflect the hardware’s capabilities (which, to most people, would be boring), or step it up and create trailers that in no way approximate the reality of playing the game in question. It will definitely be interesting to see how Nintendo plans to address that issue.

As far as Move, Kinect, and motion gaming go…well, people who visited IGN and GameTrailers just weren’t that interested. Neither one of the peripherals even broke into the top 20 when it came to purchase intent. Of course, we have to keep in mind that a lot of casual gamers aren’t necessarily going to check sites like IGN to register their intent to purchase. Total pageviews (when comparing based on system install base) were comparable. Ultimately, it looks like a lot of gamers are waiting to see things that are more concrete – specific titles sitting on a store shelf, for instance. All these tech demos won’t necessarily bring us over to one side or another, or both. (Hey, you don’t have to pick a side.)

So, what were some of the most popular titles during E3? Well, most of them were pretty expected. Valve’s Portal 2, Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops, BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, Crysis 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Halo: Reach – all pretty obvious choices for popular games as long as you’re letting people on the Internet make the choices.

One thing that isn’t really obvious until you look at the charts (seriously, they’ll be here in a second) is that…well, everything that was popular is pretty much a sequel, or at least another entry in a long-established series. We can probably attribute this to the fact that…well, a lot of people on the Internet just don’t care about new stuff immediately. The footage and information they’re looking for is related to the franchises they know and love already.

Take, for example, Epic Games’ Bulletstorm. We’ve known about it for almost two months now, and it’s coming from a studio that makes games that a ton of people already love on 360. But, at the same time, it’s not Bulletstorm 2. People aren’t familiar with the mechanics of the game, they aren’t looking forward to any specific improvements, and there’s just no reason for them to get as excited about it as they are for Gears of War 3 (or, for that matter, to go ahead and say that they’re going to buy the game). It doesn’t help that there’s no real official trailer out yet (but there is gameplay footage). No matter what cool stuff you can do within the game, it’s just not as familiar to the gaming population as a whole yet. We won’t really know how it’s going to do until it actually releases.

Really, all this data tells us is that gamers, as a whole, are fiercely loyal to the series they love. (Either that, or companies just aren’t creating new franchises worth getting excited about anymore.) We didn’t really need pageview analyses for that. Of course people say they’re going to buy something when it’s in a series they love. It just makes sense for those decisions to be made as soon as they know of a sequel’s existence – that is, the decision a person makes about buying a sequel is more likely a snap decision, while other, unknown titles will definitely take some time. Whether or not the game was featured at E3 most likely didn’t make a difference as far as software purchase decisions go, but it did make the material available at a much faster rate.

Nintendo’s press conference was a perfect example of that. Almost every game they showed was just a revamped version of a series that was already beloved, and you could sense the excitement in that room, I’m sure. No one’s immune. Not even the media (especially when it amounts to Kid Icarus finally coming back). All of that revision was a good thing for Nintendo, though. They gained five percentage points in total pageviews because of that press conference alone.

But of course, by now you want the numbers. Here they are (finally).

Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles is now shipping in North America for the Wii. The game is a new on-rails shooter that has a full 2-player co-op experience.

For some reason we can’t embed the brand new launch trailer. But you can see it here on GameTrailers.

Read My first look opinions here,and we’ll have our review by the end of the week.

Bioshock 2

The GameTrailers exclusive with all the new details on Bioshock 2 is now live and we have it below. They talk details about where Bioshock 2 starts (10 years later) and who your character is (the original Big Daddy) and what’s going on in the world of Rapture (Sophia Lam taken control).

Enjoy and we can’t wait to see more of Bioshock 2!

Fans that are excited for Bioshock 2 will get to see new footage and get brand new information on the title this Thursday on GameTrailers tv. New characters will be introduced too!

Geoff Keighley tweeted the following:

“Huge BioShock 2 episode of GTTV coming on Thursday. Lots of new single player info and footage! You’ll meet new characters too…”

Bioshock 2

GTTV on Spike is kicking G4′s butt on exclusives. This Thursday, September 3rd Geoff Keighley will have the exclusive premier of Bioshock 2′s multiplayer mode on GameTrailers TV.

“In BioShock 2′s multiplayer mode, players experience the civil war that tears the underwater city of Rapture apart. Gamers take on the role of a citizen of Rapture who becomes a product tester for Sinclair Solutions, a premier provider of Plasmids and Tonics in Rapture. Players upgrade both their weapons and their bodies with dangerous new technology while they run loose in a disturbingly perilous playground. We’ve got your first glimpse at the explosive results.”

Make sure to tune in to Spike TV, Thursday night, September 3rd at 12:30 am ET/PT.

Left 4 Dead 2

GTtv sat with Gabe Newell and they talk about things like the petition on Left 4 Dead 2 and they even cover the new Left 4 Dead 2 fairground level. Something no one else has seen yet. They also talk about Left 4 Dead DLC, Crash Mode.

GameTrailers early E3 coverage on Spike tv

GameTrailers.com and Spike TV will be hosting live from E3, but the good stuff will be shown tonight.

Spike TV’s “GameTrailers TV Presents: The 2009 VGAs-E3 First Look Special” with Geoff Keighley and Rose McGowan and Tricia Helfer to talk about 15 world exclusives all in one hour.

“‘GameTrailers TV’ Presents: The 2009 VGA-E3 First-Look Special” – Thursday, May 27 at 11:00 PM on Spike TV

Late last night Gametrailers.com revealed a new video showing in-game footage from Modern Warfare 2. New features of the game are shown as well. Full video will be shown Sunday on Spike.