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Two Ziff-Davis Magazines Cancelled
Starsmore writes "IGN is reporting that Ziff-Davis Media has pulled the plug on two of its magazines: Xbox Nation (XBN) and GMR (the collaborative effort with EB Games), for undisclosed reasons. Andrew Pfister (GMR Editor) confirms the report as well via 1up.com " From his post: "The news has broken over the Intraweb, and unfortunately, the documents are real. As of the February issue, GMR is being discontinued. Subscribers will be the only ones to receive the February issue, and all subscribers will have the option to switch over to another Ziff mag."
In other news, the circulation of clay tablets telling the saga of Gilgamesh continues to decline, and the practice of attaching messages to the legs of birds is showing no signs of revival.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I got a subscription to PC Gamer as a gift. It's not timely or anything, but they have reviews that I trust and I'm patient enough to not buy a game until they have had their say. They get exclusive previews and screenshots, and the articles are always well written. It's never anything you can't get on the internet, but it's pretty much just a very well done, comprehensive website that I can read on the couch while someone else uses the computer. If I had time to read all my gaming news on the computer, I'd be playing the dang games instead.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
Also, I've found that GMR - due to their partnership with EB - had coupons that were occassionally useful at EB. So I got the subscription to GMR, plus the 10% off pre-owned games at EB, plus coupons that I've used to save over $20 this year, for a grand total of something like 10 bucks. So that makes a pretty good case for GMR.
Another point is that the Internet is the best place to get up to date false gaming news. Furthermore, when one reads a gaming magazine, you know that the magazine is paying those reviewers. When I look at some gaming website, I don't know which reviews are astroturf by the company [if they allow user-submitted reviews] and which reviews are heavily influenced by the fact that the owner of the site is trying to get in good with some companies so that they can score some free stuff - i.e. it's a hobby site that the author is not getting paid for and therefore, he'd like to see some type of return. Granted, reviewers in printed material can also be bribed but I feel a little bit safer knowing that they are getting a salary, regardless if they're also being sent Halo 2 action figures.
THIS ACCOUNT IS OFFICIALLY RETIRED/RETARDED.
After the election, the 1up newsletter that is affiliated with XBN sent out the following:
Thanks Ohio! by Kristen Salvatore
http://gaming.ziffdavis.com/flat/Images/b.gif So I'm assuming that all of you who voted for George Bush will soon be lining up your sons, daughters, and cousins at the local armed services recruitment stations and signing them up for duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, and most likely Africa --because you voted for war.
To which I sent the following email to Ziff Davis's CFO, vp for comm, and the editor of the 1UP publication:
Hi,
Do you really think that anyone subscribes to your video game publications to hear your unoriginal, tired and ignorant commentary on a political matter?
I currently subscribe to four of your publications. Two of them are business-related (PC Magazine and eWeek). But two of them are for relaxation/amusement (XBN and EGM). I have enjoyed reading them because they are a brief refuge from the contentious world of partisan politics in which I live and work.
Unfortunately, your decision to breach that refuge with your stupid comment by Kristen Salvatore ("Hey, Thanks Ohio!") has led me to decide to cancel my subscriptions to all four. You guys want to get political and throw insults at me - fine, I simply won't subsidize you doing it anymore.
This is being sent to the 1UP editor, the director of communications for ZD, and the CFO of ZD since your decision is affecting the bottom line of the corporation.
Exxxceellleeennntt. Now watch this post get modded down to -5 a$$hole.
seriously... i'm bad luck. I almost never subscribe, only done it twice. First it was Compute (I think, anyways), what i considered a wonderful mag back when I subscribed to it (early 90s?), had programming snippits, what i considered half decent reviews and such... and then got forced over to some unremarkable mag about 4 months after i subscribed to them, as Compute got pulled. 5 days ago I signed up for GMR (after getting it with the EB Edge card previously) and now they are cancelling them, too. From now on I only subscribe to magazines I hate...
I worked at EB when we "invented" GMR. We signed up hundreds and hundreds of people per store because we were being given a spiff on each membership sale. It wasn't much, but if you sold well - and most of us at the store I worked at did - you could could away with an extra game or two every month (that's how you can tell I worked at a game store, everything is in number of games bought, not meals or gas gallons). Within a year, EB had taken that spiff away. So why resubscribe if you don't have an EB guy breathing down your neck?
My guess is that the numbers dropped significantly after EB removed the spiff. GMR was a good magazine, so it's a shame this happened but even the $5.50 an hour retail worker knew that this would happen. Anyone working for GMR knew the deal going in, I would hope.
As for XBN, which EB had nothing to do with save selling it, it seemed kind of specifically redundant. Good, but the only reason OXM does so well is the demo disc. Without the disc, why buy XBN?
Nix two magazines. Whatevs. I'm still lamenting the fall of Next Gen.