Official titles suffer as games magazine sales continue to decline

News Via Gamesindustry

Once again there are indications that the UK games magazine sector is in a continuing decline, as the latest ABC figures reveal that it's now the turn of the official mags to face a hefty drop in readership.

Back in Februrary, when the last ABC results were released, it appeared that the official magazines were holding steady as sales dropped off for other titles.

But the new figures show that Official PS2 Magazine's readership has fallen from around 132,000 to just over 100,000 - while Official Xbox takes another tumble from 64,400 to 40,500. Perhaps due to the success of the Nintendo DS, however, Official Nintendo has lost just 2000 readers, with monthly sales figures now standing at just over 35,500.

When it comes to the unofficial mags, some have faired better than others. Sales of PSW fell from around 43,700 to just under 34,500, while Games Master lost around 2000 readers, and is now selling just over 53,300 copies a month. PC Gamer's readership also fell from around 48,700 to 45,300, and PSM2 saw a drop of around 4500, with a circulation of 36,000. PC Zone lost more than 3000 readers, just topping 30,000.

However, sales of Edge magazine remained steady, hovering around the 33,600 mark, while Xbox World - now X360 World - saw its readership rise from 19,000 to more than 23,000. The first figures released so far for the Official Xbox 360 magazine show monthly sales of 42,680.

While Future continues to dominate the games magazine market, rival publisher Imagine has seen a rise in readership for some of the titles it picked up from Highbury. Sales of Play rose from 46,500 to 53,100, and Games TM readership was also up from 20,100 to nearly 21,700. The first figures for Imagine's Xbox 360 magazines show that 360 sold just under 13,100 copies, with X360 at 21,900. Uncooked Media's 360 Gamer has a circulation of around 9,100. .

With the internet getting more and more powerful and sites like DCEMU providing the most uptodate news daily its not hard to see why Magazine sales worldwide are down.

The net was going to kill off all print media but it still lives on, a good mag can survive if it provides quality content.
Personally, I prefer a physical demo disc/umd to a downloadable demo, although downloadable/expiring content seems to be the 'way of the future' :(

For casual reading I prefer something like newscientist, having it in print, despite the environment destroying paper medium still has appeal.

I am subscribe to official nintendo magazine and think it's pretty damn good, it has been abit thin recently but next month more details of the wii come out so I will definately have a good read.

not that you can't get all the info for free on the web but I prefer a physical magazine rather than staring at a computer screen.

I think official mags are always biased. Ninty official mag is the worsed offender- it says every game is excellent and makes me cringe everytime I read the word "ace" printed!! lol
I think another main reason for the downfall is the crappy gifts. I hope with the Nintendo Wii, we will get a magazine with some playable demos. Come to think of it though, we should be able to download demos from connect 24! I think multi platform magazines will prevail as they give non biased reviews and are a good medium for lovers of all the consoles as well as fanboys that want to discretely read up on other platforms/genres.

Edge is good, i had a subscription for 2 years with them

i only buy a magazine if an article draws me to it, but to be honest i've had enough of greatly biased views from the official magazines, give me an unofficial any day :p

I think Game Informer and EGM will survive with their unbaised reviews, and good previews.

well im suscribed to games master for 2 reasons

1. unbaised reviews

2. the fact i won one of those big competitions in the back :D ..... i won this one where you had to make a physical model of bender (from futurama) and send it to them. Mine was the best cause i put audio capabilities when his door on his chest was opened which made him speak a line cleverly recorded from an episode lol.

"You humans are scared of a little robot competition"

yeah i rock lol.

I buy RetroGamer and I live in Canada. Even though it costs me $17, I get to see several pages of screenshots of classic games. I have 3 issues so far.