EGM mag now bi-monthly/Gamepro now quarterly
its so sad that two existing mags from my childhood are now shells of their former selves. and to top it off, i hear Nintendo Power is not doing so well either.
has anyone seen the new Gamefan mag? i rather like the way that mags going, i hope it does well.
Haven't read Gamefan or EGM since it came back but I read Gamepro till the end and my God it was horrible for the last few years.
Game mags that don't have demos in them have a couple years left at best, and demos aren't a guarantee of survival.
Even Game Informer is really pushing digital subs now.
Printing commodities like paper and ink have been on the rise for years, and I'm sure a shrinking reader base doesn't help either.
RIP bargora, you will be greatly missed.That is how we do things on Giedion Prime.
I love magazines, but really what do they offer that you can't get for free on the internet? For most people these days it's simple economics. At least Game Informer comes with the Gamestop discount card...
what i love about print is its a snapshot of a moment in time. i can look through any of my old game magazines and see how things were at that period. same could be said of websites, but they go offline. alot of my old sites are no longer around.
I was looking at the game magazines in a local store and was thinking about buying one. I then realized that I would be paying $7 for information that was a couple months old and that I could get better and more current information for free on-line.
Agree 100%. If you could see my library of books and magazines you would agree that I'm on the side of the printing press. But, with the majority of folks these days, the internet is just far simpler, more convenient and cheaper than print.Originally Posted by dairugger
And yet the British magazines, Games TM, Edge, and Retro Gamer are still going strong without sacrificing any quality.
Leonard Herman
The Game Scholar
Publisher of Historical Videogame Books
http://www.rolentapress.com
Phoenix 4 coming in 2014
If you're going to read print magazines you just can't walk in looking for "new" information. Even 15 years ago the web was robust enough that by the time you got the issue you could have found whatever information a couple weeks prior. What the magazines offer is the spin. The editorialized take on the goings on can be worthwhile. The reviews can be interesting. And once in a blue moon, a random review can turn you on to a game that may not have been on your radar.
If you look at print mags from a purely utilitarian "just the facts, ma'am" angle then, yeah, they're a waste of money. But they offer a lot more than that to people who are looking for something more.
Last edited by TonyTheTiger; 11-04-2011 at 09:34 AM.
That $10 for Retro Gamer is starting to look more and more like a bargain every day.
amen!!
God, please say NP is petering out. Trying to stay caught up them has been a pain in the butt for us.
I have to agree with this, too. Once in a while I'll pull out a Game Informer circa 1996 or so and the atmosphere of the entire thing pulls you back into that period. It's not just one feature but the collective (the layout, the writing, the commentary, the screenshots, etc.) that as a whole induces a slew of memories that relate to that snapshot. When reading an article about the "Nintendo Ultra 64" you're getting more than just outdated info. You're actually experiencing that moment of what it was like when this shit was new.
Does Nintendo Power just rehash the same content each magazine release? I'd assume it's difficult when you're exclusive to consoles that haven't had barely any decent game announcements or releases in the last several months. Nintendo Power should start being released quarterly.
Did they make a new section dedicated to shovelware? Is that half of the magazine? :P
Last edited by kupomogli; 11-04-2011 at 12:20 PM.
Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.
To be honest I haven't seen a Gamepro magazine on a shelf at the local stores in years. I assumed they bellied up a long time ago.
I never look for game mags at the bookstore anymore so possibly they still carry them. I used to buy them at walmart or Rite-Aid.
I still have every mage I subbed from the 90's up til 2009. EGM,Gamefan,NP,Gamepro,Pocket Gamer,Tips n Tricks,EGM2,Gamenow,Gamers Republic,Game Informer and a few more. I miss gaming mags. It wasn;t just the info it was also just easier to get hyped when you had little info just what you got in print. So it creates many memories. I don;t have any memories from hype with the internet. My fave is following the hype of this Project Katana & Project Berkley for a couple years by Mags alone. Ended up as Dreamcast & Shenmue
Life!? ... What console is that on?
Interesting. Times are tough, but a mag can survive well enough with the right business strategy and the right content. Maybe this is what those mags need. Take anime news magazines, for example. Every single one of them in the US has gone under except for Otaku USA. Because they managed to hang on, they now have the full pie of that audience, and they're released every other month so they're not stretching themselves too thin. They have a lot of different kinds of content, not just breaking news, and from my vantage point as a recent addition to the staff, they appear to be having good success.
If it's bimonthly, then shouldn't they rename it EGB?
This is why I didn't renew my subscription to EGM after the first year, I knew it was only a matter of time before they went under again(they won't be around much longer). As for Gamepro, my subscription was good until 2012 or 2013 and instead of continuing to fill it with the new quarterly issues they started sending me some PC magazine which I have no interest in at all.
ALL HAIL THE 1 2 P
I feel kinda sorry for print media these days, unless you cater to a very niche market it seems as if you are doomed to fail. The more they cut content for intrusive addspace to make up for lost revenue, the less interest I have in the magazine. I really like having a physical item to hold and flip through but not when I keep running into 6 page "infoarticles".
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