So for those of you who haven't heard... EGM has been shuttered.It's actually not much of a surprise, and many industry insiders had already known this was coming, though I doubt many realized it would come in such a violent and thorough fashion.
American gaming mag journalism has been dying a slow death as it is, and EGM has been in trouble for awhile. I mean, they've been giving away subscriptions for years (3 months, 6 months, 12 months), and in all the years that I've read EGM, I've never had to pay for a subscription. All told, I've probably gotten over two years of EGM for free. When a publication is giving away that many free issues, you know they're just trying to inflate their circulation numbers to make their audience numbers more appealing to advertisers for more ad pages and ad revenue. The fact that they couldn't do it organically for so many years was a bad sign.
Then there was Ziff Davis (the parent company) filing for Chapter 11. That's never good, no matter how hard the editors tried to spin it. Basic business rule #1: Don't Run Out of Cash. Ziff ran out of cash, and what can you do without cash? NOTHING.
With EGM gone that leaves...
...GamePro, Game Informer and Play as the remaining print publications. Let's be real here, thanks to the rough economy, none of these are going to make it through the year
without bailouts of their own.
So where does that leave those of us who love the glossy, high res images delivered to us by magazines? (High res screens on your computer just aren't the same.) There's always the Brits! Edge Magazine is a relatively thick, super high quality mag with a wide range of information and a massive price tag. $72 for a one year subscription?! Okay, maybe that's not such a viable alternative. When people wouldn't even shell out $12 for a 1yr subscription of EGM, I doubt Edge is really going to be getting any significant bump in subscriptions as the American publications shutting down.
The economic recession is hitting hard, and it's difficult to say what the future will truly hold besides a bunch of unemployed managing and copy editors. Maybe one day, someone will resurrect gaming print magazines (for that matter, maybe one day someone will revive print magazines as a whole), but currently, the future is digital.
Time to look forward.
For more information on who's staying and who's leaving EGM, check out Tina's blog where she lists the goodbye posts and twitter feeds of the departed.
So where does that leave those of us who love the glossy, high res images delivered to us by magazines? (High res screens on your computer just aren't the same.) There's always the Brits! Edge Magazine is a relatively thick, super high quality mag with a wide range of information and a massive price tag. $72 for a one year subscription?! Okay, maybe that's not such a viable alternative. When people wouldn't even shell out $12 for a 1yr subscription of EGM, I doubt Edge is really going to be getting any significant bump in subscriptions as the American publications shutting down.
The economic recession is hitting hard, and it's difficult to say what the future will truly hold besides a bunch of unemployed managing and copy editors. Maybe one day, someone will resurrect gaming print magazines (for that matter, maybe one day someone will revive print magazines as a whole), but currently, the future is digital.
Time to look forward.
For more information on who's staying and who's leaving EGM, check out Tina's blog where she lists the goodbye posts and twitter feeds of the departed.
You can't put a giant red X on the EGM logo! The only people who can deface pictures with giant red X's are bounty hunters. Are YOU a bounty hunter!? I don't think so.
Hey, hey, after the hours and hours I spent Mark Hunting in FFXII, I MORE than qualify to be a bounty hunter. Step off!