It's been two weeks since the gaming industry descended upon Los Angeles with its annual E3 gaming expo. While there were numerous rumors about new hardware that would be making its debut at the show, in the end, Microsoft was the only one to offer a "new" console in the form of the Xbox One S. The company also showed off a portfolio of titles that will surely please Xbox owners and also offered a glimpse of the future with Project Scorpio. It comes as no surprise that there was a tremendous amount of curiosity surrounding Xbox, as evidenced by the numbers released today by Microsoft in regards to the week of E3.

According to the Xbox team, there was a "record-breaking response" to the announcements this year at E3. Beyond offering a live stream of the press briefing, YouTube content, Microsoft also launched its Xbox Snapchat channel, which gave viewers a chance to go behind-the-scenes and get live updates from the show floor.

The Xbox Wire offered more direct stats, which can be viewed below.

The Xbox E3 2016 Briefing was viewed over 6.6M times, an increase of 78% over last year and our most viewed live event to date. During the week of E3, videos shared on the Xbox YouTube channel were viewed over 27M times, a massive increase of 184% over E3 2015. Xbox received hundreds of E3 award nominations and wins from global outlets including IGN, Game Informer, Toronto Sun (CA), USA Today, Atomix (MX) and Polygon. In excess of 340,000 unique, customized controllers were created and saved in the all-new Xbox Design Lab. The “Friendly Update” for Minecraft that delivered Minecraft Realms to mobile and Windows 10 devices, has seen over 4M people play together across Minecraft: Pocket Edition and Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition via Xbox Live. Over 4M friendships were forged and 90M hours of multiplayer were played on Xbox Live during the week of E3 – that’s more friends than the whole population of Panama and over 10,000 years of consecutive gaming. The response to the Halo Wars 2 Beta exceeded expectations with over 1M matches played, totaling more than 2M gameplay hours. The data and feedback gathered will play a crucial role in the development of the game, ensuring Halo Wars 2 is the RTS for everyone when it launches on Feb. 21, 2017. In excess of 2M fans engaged with the newly launched Xbox Snapchat channel, checking out exclusive updates from the show floor and behind-the-scenes demos. On Twitter, #XboxE3 was tweeted over 400K times throughout the course of E3, trended as the #1 topic worldwide for over an hour and a half, and was the most tweeted of any Xbox hashtag.

Although the stats are overwhelming, the debut of Project Scorpio next year will without a doubt bring E3 numbers to new heights. It's no secret that Sony has dominated this generation of console sales, but with Project Scorpio looming on the horizon, it's abundantly clear that Microsoft will be very aggressive with Xbox in 2017.

Source: Xbox Wire via WinBeta