Cover Story

What makes an Edge cover? Let’s look at all 300 of them and find out

What goes on page one of

Edge? Let’s browse 300 issues’ worth and work it all out

How good are we at picking games to take pride of place on the cover of Edge? Are we really, as our American friends sometimes claim, biased towards titles made in the UK? Which genres do we gravitate towards? And what broader lessons can we learn from examining all 300 covers, documenting 23 years of videogaming history?

Well, the first discovery is that numbers are hard, and we had forgotten how to use Excel. Beyond that, there’s an obvious opportunity to see how Edge itself has evolved, not only in its design iterations but in editorial outlook, from the tech focus of the early days, through the hardware obsession of the middle years, and on to our more recent focus on forthcoming games. But this process also serves as a way of charting the evolution of the most dynamic form of entertainment on the planet.

Given 23 years’ worth of publishing, it’s inevitable that we’ve made mistakes along the way. The wrong horses have been backed. Some cover games were never even developed to completion, while others have seen their studios closed. But this is the cost of doing business when reporting on the future of interactive entertainment. We’d do it all again in a heartbeat.