That's right, folks, PixlBit has officially turned 17 years old. It's hard to believe that this little gaming site has been going for that long, but here we are. This year has been particularly special for the site, as it represents a full reboot of the site with new technology and a new direction.

When the site first began, it was intended to be a serious endeavor, with the intent of competing with the major gaming blogs of the time. It didn't really take long to realize that we weren't quite going to achieve those heights. Despite that, we had the pleasure of establishing some great industry connections and receiving plenty of review copies to really start making something of a name for ourselves.

It didn't take long before I was rewriting the UI for the site, beginning the 2.0 phase of its existence. During this time, the site truly grew into the place it was meant to be. 1up shut down operation and suddenly a huge influx of new users made their way to the site. The staff grew tremendously and community features and blogging became a central pillar of the site.

For years, we rode this wave, until things slowly started petering out, with just Julian Titus releasing content via Nerds Without Pants and a few users continuing to blog despite the staff largely becoming absent. And now, the site has been reborn once again.

The elusive 3.0 release finally dropped this past June after many years of planning and a solid 3 months of development. The community features are now first class citizens of the site and, hopefully, we can use this moment to begin growing into the newest version of the site.

Soon I'll be sending out a huge email blast and I hope the community will join in again, and enjoy a site built on the classic tenets of the web without all of the algorithmic noise and AI slop. Thanks to everyone out there who has helped keep this site going and I hope we can see it survive for another 17!