The Reaper is putting down its joystick to just make a note to my faithful readers: in England, Future Publishing just closed down PlayStation World magazine because of "decreasing demand."
"Decreasing demand" is definitely an understatement. In July, U.S. videogame sales fell for the fifth straight month, down a whopping 29% from a year ago. Do the games really suck now or does nobody have the money to blow in this economy?
So we look to Future's PlayStation magazine here, ingeniously called, cough, PlayStation The Official Magazine. It sounds like they can't do anything without Sony's permission. Maybe there will be a mercy clause?
Nobody is buying the PS3, sales continue to drop over the previous year. They finally plan to lower the price to $299 but I think it's too late. With a high price, low sales there isn't much of a market for a magazine catering to that specific segment that also charges a high cover price and a high subscription price. And with ad dollars evaporating you can't afford to have consumer dollars evaporate as well.
Posted by: Profit | August 18, 2009 at 10:57 AM
Bad call - in the UK Future had three PlayStation mags, closed the weakest of them, other two doing fine.
Posted by: Stu | August 18, 2009 at 06:52 PM
It's not going to shut down. Future is in a very good place right now, having all the official branded magazines and the only PC games magazine in the US. (Have you looked at the circulation for PC Gamer? It's only ~250k, so it would shut down before PTOM does.) And as Stu mentioned, the UK had three Playstation magazines.
Posted by: Henry | August 23, 2009 at 11:38 AM
Yes the PS3 has about 30% lower sales than the PS2. I love my system.... but can't win em all I guess.
Posted by: Margaret | September 02, 2009 at 04:27 PM
Marked for death: Magazine Death Pool.
The Reaper hasn't updated his devilishly grim blog about the decline of the magazine industry in three weeks, which in the blog world is near suicide.
We wonder, is the business showing unanticipated signs of life, or has the reaper just gone on sabbatical to contemplate life... and death (including that of his own website)? Whoa, we just blew our own minds.
Posted by: Zubinski | September 09, 2009 at 12:52 PM
Zubinski: Maybe he's on vacation. Or busy with the little reapers going back to school.
Posted by: junebee | September 09, 2009 at 09:01 PM
Yeah Zubinski, when are we going to see something new?
Posted by: skyblacker | September 09, 2009 at 09:06 PM
The Reaper is preparing its annual Fall Preview and I don't have a staff like TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly to do it for me. Not that they'll be around in the future anyway.
Remember, Zubinski and skyblacker, it's quality over quantity that counts!
The Reaper will return very shortly.
Posted by: MagazineDeathPool | September 09, 2009 at 11:50 PM
Will your fall preview be thicker than Vogue's? That wouldn't take as much work as it used to.
Until then, I guess I'll just have to get my magazine snark from Jezebel ( http://jezebel.com/tag/mag-hag/ ).
Posted by: oddcincy.wordpress.com | September 11, 2009 at 02:13 AM