Mag News: PlayStation magazines suffer circulation slump

[Shrygue]

via Games Industry


PlayStation, PC and multiformat magazines in the UK have once again posted declining circulation figures, although the performance of a handful of Xbox 360 titles have managed to grow for the six months ended June 30, 2007.

Future Publishing's Official Xbox 360 has increased its circulation to almost 65,700, up from 56,000 for the six months ended December 2006. Imagine Publishing's 360 has also seen a marginal increase from 11,369 to 12,017.

Xbox World 360, another title from Future, has seen circulation climb from 23,000 to 30,200 and Uncooked Media's 360 Gamer has risen to 12,500, from 10,600. Imagine's X360 has also benefited from improved circulation from 28,000 to just over 30,100 issues.

Future's PlayStation portfolio is looking grim in contrast, with all titles recording a drop in circulation. Official PlayStation 2 figures are now below 44,200, compared to 76,300 for the period ended in December.

Unofficial titles PlayStation World (17,132) PSM3 (24,121) and cheat magazine Powerstation (15,171) are all down.

Future's PC gaming titles have also suffered over the past six months, with PC Gamer (41,600), PC Zone (24,400) and PC Format (28,300) all taking a knock in circulation.

Edge and Games Master, Future's multiformat titles, continue the downward trend, recording figures of 30,000 (down from 35,000) and 47,800 (down from 53,900).

The Official Nintendo magazine has seen a rise in circulation, with numbers growing from around 43,000 to almost 48,000.

Imagine Publishing does not release six month circulation figures for PS2 magazine Play and multiformat title GamesTM.

[valar]

I used to buy Playstation 2 magazines.Demo discs are short or timed.All this information about the games you can get for free from internet.Playstation magazines are crap,not worth 6 quid.

[Joe88]

well OPM is gone now

everyone else seems to be preferring a digital fomrat instead

[robman84]

Bit of a spiral really. I used to get about 7 mags per month, but once they all reached about 5 quid each it was getting far too expensive. So as fewer people buy the mags, they have to put the prices up. So even fewer people want to buy them etc.

I'm now down to two on subscription (Edge and PC Pro) and frequently buy Retro Gamer. All the rest became easy to abandon in these days of Internet-based games editorial.