Thanks for the answers, I guess I'll first look into gated games and then make some rough estimates about the other ones. As mentioned, I don't need to know about every single title and I can leave the first generation or two as a sidenote, since the industry hadn't really taken off yet at that time. Those magazines would also be a thing happening on the side, even if they helped spawn a new generation of programmers.
But we'll see.
However, if you can tell us what you want the information for and what you're actually counting as a released game for your purposes then perhaps we might be of more assistance with a more specific number or estimate.
Well, I'm thinking of maybe make various graphs, such as the following ones:
1. How much the industry has increased in titles sold (and maybe compare that with copies sold of each title, at least for the most popular games).
2. How much money is spent making each game.
3. How much each genre has evolved and which year each genre was introduced on the market (and what genres there are).
4. The evolution of platforms and introduction of new ones.
5. Are there any genres that I've completely missed playing, myself, and which?
6. Which years the industry has gone better or worse, and how that correlates to other global events - e.g. the financial crisis.
I'm aware that I shouldn't expect too impressive results. But if nothing else, then at least I've learned to what extent it's an impossible task. I'll just start with the AAA platforms and work my way into tigerland.
....and How would you figure in your statistics the number of games released for different platforms? Example : EASports releases it games for PC, XBox, PlayStation etc..
would they count as 1 or once for each platform.
What about games released soley as Arcade only machines, do you want to count those ?
I think I would rather learn to speak Klingon (LOL) than research this.
By first writing down the title of each game and its platform(s) and then write the appropriate graph based on it. And I already know Klingon. (No, just kidding )
I might write Spreadsheets for each platform where most or all titles are known, for instance. Also, depending on the statistic, some of those concerns aren't as relevant.