Somewhat earlier than normal, my yearly MobyTradition. Going strong for 8th years in a row, I present to you the stats graph of entries per game platform!

Previous editions:
January 2016 - January 2015 - January 2014 - January 2013 - January 2012 - January 2011 - January 2010 - January 2009


(Click to enlarge)

An explanation: each coloured shape in the graph represents a platform. The horizontal axis is time. The vertical axis represents the number of games released. So the height of a shape on a given point in time indicates the number of games released for that platform that year. The total height of the graph on a given point in time shows the total releases that year.

[All data taken from MobyGames. Of course, the graph is only as complete as our database is - meaning we currently undercount some new digital game platforms like PC/Mac, digital console, and iOS/Android since we don't 'scrape' those databases automatically - and the dropoff in 2015 and 2016 is because we're still entering newer games into the database. Come help us if you can!]

Just wanted to update on some of the large strides we've made with 'promo images' (in this case, official screenshots) in recent weeks, thanks to FireFang9212 (on PlayStation platforms) and Maner76 (for Nintendo platforms!)

Recently, FireFang9212 has been going backwards through the PS3 releases we have adding promotional images from PlayStation.com. This is easier now that we support 'vanilla' PlayStation.com game page URLs in addition to PlayStation Store pages. He's doing a great job, having added almost 7500 images in the past few weeks, yay. In many cases these database entries had no screenshots at all, so it's a major win.

Additionally, Maner76 has been doing similarly for Nintendo DS games, and has got over 2500 images added, which is an amazing total - again including many games that were completely lacking in-game visuals in our system until now.

If anyone would like to help them out, we're looking for people to tackle PSP, PS Vita or PS4 entries systematically by going alphabetically through and putting PlayStation.com URLs in to our easy 'scraping' system for each game. If anyone wants to add Wii/Wii U & 3DS promo images, we could also do with some help there - although some scraping has occurred for some of the above platforms.

Just mention it in the thread attached to this news, and work methodically, so we don't step on each other! And for games we don't have in our database at all, look for a scraping-related announcement/advancement on this soon. (Also, we just added the ability to scrape JP.PlayStation.com URLs, if anyone would like to help on Japanese-only titles or if screenshots differ on the Japanese version of PlayStation.com.)

Just a very brief shout-out to Rainer S. for his spectacular new MobyPoints milestone. After reaching 25,000 points back in December of last year, he's made it all the way to 50,000 as of today! That's 25th on the all-time list, and a massive amount of high-quality game cover scans has a lot to do with that. Please join me in thanking him for his sterling work.

As the holiday rapidly approaches, and since Tony Denis kindly wrote up Duke: Nuclear Winter as our Featured Game Of The Week, we thought we'd ask MobyGames contributors & friends - what's your favorite and least favorite Xmas/holiday themed games of all time Reply in this news thread and we'll try to do a 'best of' on the front page (or, uhh, 'worst of') before Christmas-time itself! [EDIT: the weekly poll is now themed around your answers!]

[Side note: we need more Featured Games of all kinds, btw, submit some if you have a chance.]