This is something I've been meaning to assemble for a while.

We all have our pet theories about publisher reactions to console sales and install bases -- we often speculate about who's releasing what, and when.  I thought it might be interesting to look at software trends over time, based on the number of titles released each week for the three current platforms and the growth of each platform's library.  Dates are in US numeric format, month/day/year (I'll fix that in a future update.)

Disclaimer:  I'm taking my historical data from a couple of different sources, and timing may be off here and there where a title was slated to come out one week according to one source and actually emerged for sale in a later week according to another.  But I haven't found anything more than a few weeks out of synch, no titles just completely failing to show so far, so I think the data in aggregate is pretty much on target.  It will be more accurate from here on out, as I will try to keep this updated each week with actual release data (and correct this coming week's data if need be.)

Also, this says nothing about the quality of titles released, it's just a look at the overall library size.  This is not irrelevant, though, as I would argue that the more games released in total, the more likely some really great games will emerge from the pack -- and only diehard collectors and masochists buy EVERY game released for a console.

Initial impressions:  I hadn't realized the 360 drought lasted so long after launch (might be gaps/lags in my historical data), but its library is growing at a steady clip right now.  If we assume linearity, right now the 360 has and will continue to have the strongest software library, with the Wii ramping up only slightly faster than the PS3 at this point.  Note the big rampups in last year's Wii/PS3 launch and 360 holiday season, I expect we'll see a similar pattern this year. 

Upcoming PS3 131 games
Upcoming 360 158 games
Upcoming Wii 87 games

Released PS3 37 games
Released 360 123 games
Released Wii 59 games

thank you ddobson i have been waiting for someone to post a thread like this.. about time someone on this site realizes that the 360 had a drought of games after it launched.. maybe this will lessen the people bashing the ps3 people saying wait for a steady flow of games

those 87 wii games are better than anything else tho. XD (someone would say something similar. I just thought it was funny becuase you know they would relate to saying PS3/360 games suck)

 I disagree to the argument of the PS3 fans "wait to the flow of games".

But i also disagree to what you say here. Even if there will be less games for PS3 than Xbox360, having more than 100 on road for PS3 can't be a bad news ... 

im not sure if you understood what i was saying.... when the 360 came out there was a drought... all i heard was lets wait for the games.... when the ps3 came out there was a drought.. all you hear is wait for the games... Same thing right?? but heres the difference ps3 fans get bashed for saying that.. because everyone believes sony should have had a library of games ready right at launch just so they could compete with microsoft and nintendo.. but no lauch has ever been like that so why expect it now???

and i never said anything about less ps3 games coming than the 360...

Interesting stuff. This would be nice to have kept updated in the future.

Actually the initial X360 drought is well known, but I too didn't realize it was a measly 20 titles for a whole 4 months!

Looking at the graph it's also interesting to see that up until aug '06, a whole 10 months after release, there was still only 45 titles out for X360, but after that the curve takes on a new sharper angle upwards. In the 9 months from aug '06 to may '07 another 75 titles were released. But the real flood of games is just around the corner...

I found numbers that differ a bit to Fractal's (in the 2nd post).

According to Gamespy announced for 2007:
PS3 130 games
360 182 games
Wii 123 games

According to IGN upcoming total:
PS3 213 games
360 228 games
Wii 136 games

I'm not sure if now is the best time to compare the line-ups ...

E3 is exactly 1 month away and it is likely that many games are going to be announced at that event, and it will probably not be an even distribution across consoles. I personally expect the Wii to gain the most titles at E3 because of how traditionally tight lipped Nintendo is, and third party developers have claimed massive increases in support (15 new games in development from EA) and few games have been announced at this point in time. It is possible that the PS3 or XBox 360 could get the lion's share of new games at E3 so I think we will have to wait and see what happens.

Great post, thank you for your effort ddobson!

but about the post I quoted here: There is a big difference between the xbox drought and the ps3 drought, and this difference is called headstart. with a headstart, it's not such an issue to have a drought because there is no console with which you can compare. This is also the advantage of a headstart, it allows you to make some mistakes, while you have to be perfect if you want to win a generation without a headstart.

True, I didn't think of that. The X360 will get tons of new announced titles at E3 simply because it's so easy to develop on (for example to develop in parallell with PC games), but Wii will have surprisingly many too.