If this is your first time to this site, let us welcome you to what we hope will become your new daily source of gaming information. Instead of adding another voice to an already crowded market of game sites and magazines, GameStats is focused squarely on providing the most objective view on games, both released and unreleased. To do this, GameStats assembles articles from around the web, allows gamers to weigh in with their opinions, and lets you access daily popularity statistics for thousands of games.

The Database
GameStats uses the web's most detailed game database, courtesy of gaming and entertainment network IGN.com. That means information and media for more than 27,000 games is right at your fingertips, including game and company data, release dates, cheats, walkthroughs, screenshots, movies, and more. If you find a game that's not listed, submit it and we'll add it as soon as we can.

The Gauge
The Popularity Gauge is one of our key features. Every game catalogued on GameStats comes with its own set of statistics, expressed in what we call GPM (Game Popularity Metric). This number shows you how popular a specific title is at this point in time. While quality has a big effect on the staying power of a game, GPMs are not representative of a game's quality -- they express buzz, desire to play the game, awareness, and post-release activity. How is this done? Instead of taking our website's traffic data as the be-all-end-all metric to determine popularity, GameStats uses data gathered from IGN.com's more than 18 million monthly visitors and compiles wishlist and collection list activity, email requests, message board posts, article, faqs, and cheat code pageviews into a number between 0 and 100, then displays everything in form of an easy to read gauge. You can find this gauge on every game summary page. Simply use the search engine, the top game navigation, or the front page links to find the games you're looking for.

Take a look at the sample gauge above. Underneath the graphical gauge, you will find the GPM rating in numerical form along with a trend arrow. This arrow shows whether a game is gaining in popularity or losing it. The color of the number changes from red (80 or above) to blue (20 or below) highlighting what games are hot and cold.

You can also see the game's relative position within the entire database of titles (overall GPM ranking) as well as its position within the platform's lineup. Be sure to click on the buttons to see those rankings.

Finally, the checkbox at the bottom of the gauge element allows you to take advantage of the GameStats on-demand newsletter, powered by IGN. Check off a game and we will send you the updates for that title by email whenever something new gets added. That way, you'll always be able to read the latest reviews and previews for the games you really care about. Don't want to get emails anymore? Just uncheck the box.

The Ratings
GameStats tracks all major publications, both online and print. You can see the latest articles we've added on the front page (or on the summary page for the game you're interested in). We take all the ratings, convert them to the industry standard 0-10 scale, and generate an average "press score" which is displayed underneath the game's box art (left column). But gaming is entertainment for the people, so we'd be insane not to weigh in your opinions as well. By rating games and submitting reader reviews, you directly influence the "gamer score", located underneath the press rating. Both scores are then combined to an average GameStats Score (GSS). You can also see the game's relative ranking, according to overall score, within the total GameStats database and the respective platform. Note that due to the size of our database, this number is only calculated once per day. So while we add new reviews and scores all day long, there can be a delay until the ratings box will reflect those changes.

With all the basics out of the way, there's just one more element we should address:

You
GameStats is a new site -- and it will only succeed with your help. If you enjoy our free service, here's what you can do to contribute:

• Submit articles -- To ensure that our ratings and article lists are as up-to-date and accurate as possible, submit reviews and previews from sites and magazines that you notice are missing.
• Contribute opinions -- Write reader reviews and/or rate games for all the games you've played. Your tastes and opinions -- both positive and negative -- can help determine the course of the gaming industry.
• Join our focus group -- By using our wishlist and collection rankings system, you not only get a valuable tool for keeping track of your games, you can also let the world know what games you want, which ones you own and want to keep, and which ones are a waste of time.
• Feedback -- Email us your feedback. Are there specific features you would like to see added?
• Evangelize -- We don't have quadrillions of dollars to waste on Superbowl commercials, so be sure to tell your friends about GameStats. Link to us. Use our ratings.

The GameStats community tools are operated by IGN, meaning your data is stored securely on IGN's servers. If you are already a registered member of the IGN network, you are all set to access any and all of the features on this site. For information on IGN's privacy policy, check here. If you haven't joined yet, sign up now! GameStats membership is free and creating yourself a username only takes a minute.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Complaints? You can reach the editors of GameStats via our GameStats Email Form to let us know what you think of the site and what we can do to improve the service.

Thank you for your support,
The GameStats Team