 | The decline of the gaming magazineAugust 17th, 2007 |
MCV has stats on how print mags are doing in the UK, and it tells an interesting story. Basically, all the Playstation magazines are in decline, and the Nintendo and XBox mags are on the rise.
But declining along with the PS mags, alas, are the PC mags, despite the fact that PC gaming is going great guns (see the last article I posted).
The issue, of course, is that it’s going great guns in a completely different arena. The center of gravity of PC gaming has shifted away from hardcore games. Once upon a time, a title like BioShock would have been a PC exclusive, and today everyone is excited about seeing it on the 360.
The new PC game consumer won’t likely read any magazines about the industry, because they are a primarily casual consumer. And in that fast-paced a market, stuff like lead time for print is even more devastating than it is for the packaged goods industry.
Interestingly, Computer Games and Massive, which were undergoing some troubles, seem to have been picked up by a new publisher (though I haven’t heard if the same editorial crew remains — Steve? Cindy? you there?). I don’t know what the strategy is to try to deal with this overall market shift.
And at the same time, we also see folks like Totilo and Croal having extended discussions about why they like casual games so much now…
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