Why can’t online sources do this too? It seems to me that online sources hold most of the cards, especially in terms of cost. The only two things I can think of that a print magazine can offer that an online magazine can’t are the ability to be read anywhere (like waiting in a doctors office) and content DVDs.
Of course you can have a laptop and WiFi access or simply allow large demo downloads to users with broadband. Given those, what can a print magazine possible offer over online?
If they smelled like your namesake would you read them in the toilet more often?
Well … these are somewhat tangential issues but I generally find reading a magazine to be more relaxing and pleasurable than reading a web site.
No load times. No eye strain. No sifting through a million little headlines trying to find something I’m interested in. No pop-up ads. I can sit on my bed or couch and sink my teeth into a brand new shiny issue and just chill and flip and sip a tasty beverage.
I love magazines and I’ll continue to subscribe to my favorites indefinitely. I don’t think this is an either/or issue. I like them both. For different reasons.
It’s not that they can’t, so much as, as they are designed now, there is little incentive to. The online outlets operate on almost a 24 hour cycle with near daily refreshes to the front page, so any in depth feature or preview will be buried in a matter of days.
It’s the same reason that people read Time or The New Yorker for their features instead of CNN.com. Of course, the news media has many alternative feature outlets like Slate or Salon, but there really isn’t any major online parallel in gaming. (The Escapist, maybe?)
Troy
Well, I read on Slashdot where magazines have issued a statement stating that they think all Jeff Greens suck.
I’ve been one of the two pointmen coordinating our E3 schedule for years now, and I can’t remember the last time I got any pushback about an appointment. In fact, I spent the majority of this week finalizing all our E3 appointments, and if anything, 95% of those meetings are initiated by the publishers contacting us.
(heck, today I’ve gotten meeting requests from three big publishers who we’ve already booked time with. :)
I think it’s more of a question of matching up the content and the medium. Joystiq and Kotaku specialize in short, immediate, info bits presented with varying degrees of attitude. To me, these are the wave of the future on the web, the gatekeepers for those who can’t or won’t scan every gaming-related site. Gaming sites like 1UP and GameSpy are moving toward this model because the optimal size of a unit of content appears to be smaller on the web. I like GameSpy, but its magazine-style features and columns are infrequent, and darn few of their columns stay on a regular schedule.
In contrast, a magazine is fixed and delivered with certainty every month to subscribers. You’re not dependent on click-throughs or worried about whether your link will fall off the front page in 4 hours. The reader is committed, not grazing the site. The committed reader is more interested in substance than gathering the essentials and moving on to the next website. Magazines should reward this committment by presenting content with more depth and professionalism.
I think it’s more of a question of matching up the content and the medium. Joystiq and Kotaku specialize in short, immediate, info bits presented with varying degrees of attitude. To me, these are the wave of the future on the web, the gatekeepers for those who can’t or won’t scan every gaming-related site. Gaming sites like 1UP and GameSpy are moving toward this model because the optimal size of a unit of content appears to be smaller on the web. I like GameSpy, but its magazine-style features and columns are infrequent, and darn few of their columns stay on a regular schedule.
In contrast, a magazine is fixed and delivered with certainty every month to subscribers. You’re not dependent on click-throughs or worried about whether your link will fall off the front page in 4 hours. The reader is committed, not grazing the site. The committed reader is more interested in substance than gathering the essentials and moving on to the next website. Magazines should reward this committment by presenting content with more depth and professionalism.
Just one more vote to say that’s Jeff’s got it nailed.
I just picked up the new GFW issue (SimCity:Societies), precisely because it has the in-depth discussion and analysis often lacking on the websites. So long as they continue with that differentiation from Gamespy/IGN/et al, I’ll keep purchasing his mag.
Chris
Hmm. I am a loyal GFW subscriber, but I was annoyed to see there was a LOTRO review, flip to it in some excitement, and after two sentences realize, “Wait I read this on the website already”, with no apparent additional content. That was definitely a “Then why am I subscribing?” moment.
In a case like that, especially for a MMOG, it would be nice to have some extra in-depth coverage of the gameplay, world, or development process or something that wasn’t part of the initial website review.
So uhhhhh . . . you know how about every year someone links to some ad agency/service/web site that you can sign up for free magazine subscriptions?
Where’s uh, the link this year? Because my last GFW, it didn’t come. :(
Hey, I’m still reading all the ads, and that’s the VAST majority of the revenue for the mag, right? Right?
And while we’re on the topic, why do magazines charge for subscriptions? Because it costs money to run them? Don’t web sites cost money to run too? Most of them don’t charge you to read their articles (maybe for higher res trailers and such).
I’ve noticed The Sporting News doing that, too – they’re leaking identical magazine content before I get my issue at home to Yahoo!'s fantasy baseball news online. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
Someone mentioned Edge magazine … I didn’t realize this: “Between 1995 and 2002, some of the content from the UK edition of Edge was published in the United States as Next Generation.”
I had no idea. I’ll have to pick up Edge after work. Next Gen was my favorite gaming magazine ever.
A page of print, even in huge quantities, ends up costing about a cent. Take 500,000 issues with 150 pages each and you’re looking at $750,000 or so just in print costs. IGN’s bandwidth bill is nowhere near that high.
IMO, Edge is better now than Next Generation was in it’s heyday. Their articles that aren’t outdated before they’re printed because they more about ideas than news. It’s the only magazine I keep around for reference.
As an aside: The reviews are a bit wacky; they score a bit on the low side and aren’t completely reliable. They do seem to favor developers in the UK to those outside the country.
The profit margin on US magazines are really really low, because of people like ElG there.
Well not just that, but compared to other parts of the world the US buyerbase is just so used to getting stuff for free and expecting ad revenue to pay for it all - which makes it hard on a competitive market or for small magazines without a lot of ad potential.
And besides printing (and wages) you have to count distribution costs across a pretty big country.
The mag I used to work for cost $11 and had a subscribtion base of 120-140K and hardly any newsstand sales. Even discounting the fact that everything is more expensive here, that would not be possible in the US.