Game Informer Magazine's Massive Reader Base

The Video Game Ombudsman, Kyle Orland, discusses Game Informer Magazine's two million strong subscriber base and their coverage in the Washington Post. GI is the house organ for Gamestop, making its subscriber base not much of a surprise. What is surprising is that their two million readers puts them within half a million subscribers of "O", the magazine stamped with the Oprah brand, and just outside the top 25 magazines in the country. From the post: "The rest of the article is a semi-interesting look at the life of the editor of the country's most popular game magazine, and I have to say... it sounds pretty awesome! Here's to a gaming mag cracking the circulation top 10 sooner than later."

Comments

It won't take long with the merger

[Grave]

And with the EB/GameStop merger, the subscriber base is going to grow pretty quickly in the next two years.

Re:It won't take long with the merger

[Ra5pu7in]

Depends on whether the customer base was that divided or not. I've shopped at both - mostly depending on which mall or shopping area I'm heading toward otherwise. If a large portion of their customer base is overlap, magazine subscriptions won't grow much. OTOH, if most gamers only shop at one or the other, then it may well grow.

==========

As to the Game Informer, I've gotten the GameStop card twice. I buy enough games in general, and used games specifically, to save a decent amount. The magazine is just extra fluff that cost me nothing with occasional tidbits of useful information (such as the expected release date on games). I don't care for most of their reviewers (too much effort put into trying to be funny) or the reviews they write. I do enjoy the pictures (while ignoring their juvenile captions).

I can easily understand the two million subscriber mark if they are counting everyone who has ever gotten one of the GameStop cards. If they only counted people who chose to subscribe and sent in a check ... well, then I'd actually be impressed.

Re:It won't take long with the merger

[Anonymous Coward]

No, EB and Gamestop announced a merger within the past day or so.

Here:

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/18/ 1816244&from=rss

Heh Heh

[0kComputer]

'We're almost as big as Oprah'
Don't worry, just keep eatin' the chilly dogs and mountain dew and you'll get there.

Why didn't you link to the actual article?

[Adapt or Die]

Seems that it would make more sense to link directly here instead.

The Game what???

[MBraynard]

I am a frequent reader of gaming magazines - I normally pick them up at the airport pre-flight and am subscribed (not that I remember subscribing) to a few of them. But I have _never_ seen or heard of Game Informer.

I really miss the one or two extremely funny gaming mags from back in the day - I can't recall their names, but there were two of them. PC Accelerator or something maybe and Insight or something like that? Really hope someone could remind me of their names.

Anyway, I'm really surprised no gaming mag is in the top 25 - about as surprised as I am htat I had never heard of the top gaming mag.

Re:The Game what???

[UWC]

PC Accelerator lasted a couple years. It was pretty much a raunchier PC Gamer. Same publisher and everything. I've always been a PC Gamer purist. I bought a couple of PC Accelerator issues, too, I think. Decent quality, actually, but seemed to be trying too hard to be edgy. Only other gaming magazines I've bought have been for demo discs. I'm not subscribed to anything now, but PC Gamer is the only gaming magazine to which I've ever subscribed. I remember the first issue I bought (quite a while before I ever subscribed) had a 3.25" floppy disk with a demo of The Incredible Machine 2. There was apparently a CD version of the magazine introduced I think just that month, but I hadn't yet taken the optical plunge. Reviews that issue I think included Wing Commander 3 and Warcraft 2.

As for Game Informer, I've heard of it, but I think mostly just when I've been in Gamestop locations. I've definitely never read a copy.

Re:The Game what???

[AceCaseOR]

I stopped buying PC Gamer after reading their review of the PC port of "Silent Hill 2".

The first paragraph of the review stated the reviewer's unending dislike of Survival Horror games. Now, while I hadn't gotten around to playing Silent Hill 2 yet, I found that very first paragraph marred the review for me. I found the review to be less about the actual game, and more a rant against the genre of Survival Horror games in general.

A similar thing almost caused me to cancel my subscription to GameNOW. This was back when Sushi-X was back on the roster. Now, I remebered Sushi fondly back from the EGM of the early 90's. However, his reviews of Kung Fu Chaos and Soul Calibur II just irritated the hell out of me. The review of Kung Fu Chaos was less about the game and more attacking the game because it was a comedic martial arts game. Likewise, with the review of Soul Calibur II, it was spent attacking the game because Todd McFarlane had anything to do with it.

In both cases, I wanted to know about how the game played, how was the camera angle, how were the controls, etc. Instead, the rant overshadowed the content. Not cool, not cool at all. As it was, GameNOW went under, and Sushi did not make the jump to EGM. I will still remember fondly my memories of Sushi-X, but I think of him now as the magazine reviewer equivilent to Hulk Hogan, great back in the day, but don't put him back in the ring anymore, because he just doesn't have it.

Re:The Game what???

[xenocide2]

You probably haven't heard of Game Informer because you don't shop at a gamestop. That rag is pushed and published by the video game retailer that will account for around half of all game sales after their merger with EB. But then, its not like game magazines were ever much more than corporate agitprop. Nintendo Power certainly started a trend, but they also came from the company who got its start in the business limiting developers to two games a year and stringent quality standards.

Long live GMR!

[-kertrats-]

By far the best gaming magazine in the past few years was the short-lived GMR magazine, which was EB's version of Gameinformer. It was written by some great people who I've talked to a few times, and had the best articles, reviews, previews, and sense of humor of any magazine out there. It was the gamer's magazine. Unfortunately, the plug was pulled on it a few months ago (in hindsight, maybe because of internal knowledge of the GS buyout?) and it's gone forever now. For those interested, I'd definitely check out a back issue; even if the info is outdated, it's worth it.

I refuse to read Game Informer

[HAKdragon]

GI won't receive a cent from me since their whole fiasco with Paper Mario. For those who don't know, they gave Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door for the Gamecube a low score (something like a 6 out of 10) because the game would be precieved as a kiddy game. While it is true the game is very accessable to a younger audience, the game did have some more adult oriented jokes and dialog that the youngins wouldn't get. GI tried to give the excuse that the reason that they gave the low score is because they review games on how the gaming public would recieve it, not on the quality of the game itself.

Somewhat inflated.

[BlueFashoo]

My former roommate worked for Gamestop for a while, and had to get a minimum of new subscriptions. I don't think it was too high, but every now and then, he would end up with a new subscription for himself. Every month I still receive three copies of the magazine.

Re:Oh please

[Da Rabid Duckie]

Oh it's very fair to compare it, because any reader, whether it be from a purchased subscription, one that came free from a discount card, or one that came from a free subscription via freebizmag.com... is still a reader. In fact, publishers make their money using this logic.

See, magazines make very little money by just selling subscriptions. But take any magazine you own and turn it around, and you'll probably see an advertisment there. A company paid a lot of money for that advertisement, as did any of the other companies who purchased ads for that particular issue. When choosing the pricing for ads, the publishers use the circulation as a bargaining chip, because they can get away with higher marketing fees with a magazine that has a circulation of, say... 2 million readers. Now, never mind how they got their readers... a reader is a reader, and the more readers they have, the more marketing dollars they generate.

Re:Game Informer Never Stops!!

[snuf23]

This is a common practice in magazine publishing. It's called a controlled subscription vs. a paid. Magazines generally do NOT make money off of paid subscriptions, they make money off of advertising. Overall paid subscription numbers have been dropping for years. The advertisers do not care whether a subscriber is paid or not, what they want is a large subscriber base that you can validate as being interested in your product. So when Gamespot takes your name down when you get their discount card, they can consider you to be a game playing and purchasing reader of Game Informer. Which is exactly who the advertisers want to reach.
One of the companies I work for is a regional magazine publishing company and most of the publications operate this way. For example the regionl business publication is given away free to chambers of commerce, lawyers, high profile businesses etc.

Lets keep things in perspective here:

[GrandCow]

1. GI sucks. It reeks of developer inventives/kickbacks for favorable reviews.
2. A typical game purchase at GameStop goes like this: "Hey, you know if you get the frequent buyer card with your purchase you get a free subscription to Game Informer. Also you take the first issue home with you right now. BTW, there is a $5 off the frequent buyer card coupon in the issue right now, and we can use that towards your card purchase. With the 10% off discount and the coupon, your frequent buyer card is absolutely free."

Honestly, how many people are going to say no? I got my subscription, saw how crappy the magazine is, and barely spent 5 minutes on each months issue before I threw it away.

Give something away for free, and obviously people are going to take it. That doesn't mean the magazine is any good.