Slashdot Mirror
Print Gaming Magazines Doomed?
Joystiq has a pair of interesting posts up looking at the future of print gaming publications. Besides positing on the future of the print media, they discuss subscription and reach rates for some of the major U.S. magazines. From that piece: "Game Informer really is several times larger than their nearest competitor. How did they manage that? And why the heck is the Official U.S. Playstation Magazine passed around so much than all the other publications?" I wonder what the differences are between here and abroad? In the UK, for example, there are a large number of publications, all of which seem to have avid readerships. (Though, with magazines like Edge and PC Gamer UK, it's hard not to see why.)
Sample of games rags from www.abc.org.uk
Official Playstation 2 (Future Publishing Ltd) 133,242
Official UK Xbox Magazine (Future Publishing Ltd) 85,072
Games Master (Future Publishing Ltd) 55,388
PC Gamer (Future Publishing Ltd) 48,326
Nintendo Official Magazine (EMAP Active Limited) 37,760
Edge (Future Publishing Ltd) 31,078
Games TM (Highbury-Entertainment Ltd) 20,117
The technology is coming soon. E-ink is a perfect solution once production costs drop. It uses no backlight, looks like it's on paper and only uses electricity when it needs to change the text. As long as the text is static, no power is consumed. I believe Sony actually presented something at CES just recently. Here it is, the Sony Reader. Unfortunately, it's still a little bulky, about the size of a small paperback.