In May 2022, it was announced that the billion-dollar company Embracer Group had taken a break from acquiring every company under the sun to establish a new initiative to "archive and save as much of the video games industry as possible".
And now, thanks to a recent LA Times article (accessed via Yahoo Finance News and TweakTown), we can finally start assigning some slightly more up-to-date numbers to those preservation efforts. Per the LA Times article, the company has apparently spent a whopping $2 million amassing a large collection of over 60,000 games for its archive that currently exists inside a 16,000-square-foot industrial warehouse.
David Boström, the CEO of the archive, tells the LA Times:
"We are trying to create a kind of history or heritage museum. Embracer has so many games and studios but far from everything out there, so we want to give a picture of the complete story of gaming."
The goal is certainly a noble one, but frustratingly it seems the archive is still private for the time being. The intention going forward, however, is to closely "network and collaborate with initiatives, museums, and institutions" as well as "provide help to researchers and journalists with inquiries". That's according to the website, at least. We'd also personally like to see some more videos educating people on their efforts and some of the rarer items in their collection. After all, video game history is our history and should be shared.