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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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.