Joystiq just reported a story about Future Magazine company not having too much success last year in the United States. Future publishes magazines like Playstation Magazine, Official XBOX Magazine, and PC Gamer. They also run and maintain the Gamesrader website.
While this is somewhat unsurprising with the recent closure of magazine Giant and industry hallmark Electronic Gaming Monthly. But what it is saying is that the business model that magazines currently have must be broken. There can be little other reason why these video game magazines are failing when other magazines that serve a much smaller audiences are still going strong.
There certainly was a time when there were FAR TOO MANY videogame magazines. But in recent years just about everyone of the magazines that are not closely affiliated with a bigger business model have failed wholly. Gameinformer Magazine for instance is closely affiliated with video game retail giant Gamestop. This relationship I'm sure has kept them a float when they would have otherwise failed. Also, keeping the size of the magazine down to a minimum doesn't hurt either.
Has the sun set on the day of insightful video game reporting in print? Has the internet wholly replaced print media in the video game industry? Only time will tell. But I hope not, hopefully all this tumult will result in a stronger, smaller, video game print media. But I guess we are also hoping the recession will do that to our economy; and that isn't going so well.
-Devilsalias
No comments:
Post a Comment