GameDB News Roundup 02/2015

Let's take another look at new developments within the video game database landscape.

The biggest news this cycle made IGDB, who launched the first version of their API. An API offers standardized access for fetching all kinds of data from a database, so they can be used elsewhere, and is therefore an important thing to have. This first IGDB API offers access to game data, companies, people, franchises, and platforms, which seems quite comprehensive so far. There's also the possibility for game shops to integrate their game products to the price comparison feature of IGDB.

Sorting out the platform mess

 

Introduction

It's no secret that every game needs some hardware (HW) to run on, and most of them also need some basic software (SW) like an operating system (OS) on top of that HW. But the traditional platform model we see at many, if not all, video gaming sites out there is a wild mix of HW and SW. You see consoles like the PlayStation, OS's like Linux or Windows, "platform-independent" SW like a Browser, or even Arcade boards lumped together into one single layer of platform data. This get-together of all the different technical platforms in one place leads to quite some problems when it comes to documenting game releases.

GameDB News Roundup 01/2015

This blog post shall be the start to a series of news items which shortly summarize the latest developments in the video game database landscape. As we closely watch a number of projects, it's only logical to collect all the news in one place.

In the last months, three databases reported new contribution milestones regarding the number of games in the databases. MobyGames reached 50K "unique games", the rather new project IGDB reported reaching 10K games, and the Italian project UVL even celebrated 100K games lurking in their database. Now does that mean that MobyGames is five times as successful as the IGDB, and the UVL is twice as successful as MobyGames? Obviously not.