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Ziff Davis Teeters
Longtime Reader writes: "It is a short article with links all over the place, but Linux and Main is running a story that says Ziff Davis might file for bankruptcy this week. The company plans to stay in business by expanding its focus on computer games, the story says." To get you started, reader idiotnot contributes this link to coverage in the NYT.
I hate to see people loose their jobs, but zdnet and pcmag have been useless for over 5 years now. PCMag in particular stop reporting back in 95 and only rehashed PR junk. It is time for new crop of magazines to take the place of all the dead weight in the tech reporting industry. Zd used to have solid in depth articles that were fairly objective. But soon after win95 came out, that all changed. Of course these are my own biased opinions, but I know other techies share similar perspectives.
The NYT article said that ZD lost $30 million on Yahoo Internet Life since its launch. I think that's a pretty good reason to close it.
>> Nobody will accept Ziff Davis doing games.
Huh? They have owned Computer Gaming World for quite a while.
>> Best they stick to what they do but focus their attention at serving their customer base and not catering to the OEMs.
News flash: Their customer base is the OEMs, not the readers. Your paltry few bucks per issue barely covers the cost of postage or distribution. The advertisers pay most of the costs.
Nobody will accept Ziff Davis doing games.
Except for the few million people that already do through subscriptions or rack purchases of "Official US Playstation Magazine", "Xbox Nation", "Electronic Gaming Monthly", "GameNow", or "Computer Gaming World".
At least nobody will be willing to accept that they are impartial.
Anyone that accepts that any game rag is impartial is fooling themself.
Cheer! Here's one woman gamer cheering your comments.
I quit EQ when they redesigned the boobs to be lethal weapons. I'm 33 years old, married, the mother of three kids, and buy WAY more games a year than your average 14 year old gamer. Why? Cause I have a job, and cash to buy them. I buy pretty much whatever catches my fancy. I don't have to save my paper route money, nor do I have to beg my parents for the money.
Attracting new customers should be the goal of every new game. Instead of all those companies catering to the same, tired, cliched gamer, perhaps they should start looking at the gamers everyone forgets.. women. Oh, damn, you know, I forgot, someone already did that... The Sims. And wouldn't you know, its the best selling PC game... EVER.
Catch a clue guys. We're here. We just don't talk to you all cause you are so damn RUDE. You treat us as if we aren't anything more than a pair of breasts and a pussy and that we're on this planet only to provide you with masturabatory material.
Disclaimer: I do not mean all of you. I mean some of you who also replied to this thread. Shouldn't take much brainpower to figure out to whom I am referring.
My issue is that ZD is not operating at a loss, but they still plan on putting 700 people out of work, and discontinuing publications that have readership.
To be honest, I'm somewhat astounded at your post. You start off with a set of facts, and then go off the deep end with your conclusion contradicting your facts!
Their not cutting profitable parts of their company, they're cutting the unprofitable parts. Do you really think that they should continue paying 700 employees that are losing money for them?
Now, if you want to make the argument that somehow they should give these losing parts of the company more time to become profitable, that's a different argument, and I (or probably you) don't have enough facts to render a judgment on that.
Once again I have to say: Employees are not 'owed' employment.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.