Have gaming magazines died?

[DukeRed]

Can't find any in the shops in the UK.

 

[Gorse]

Yeah, pretty much. You can still order specialist ones online, but all the mainstream print ones died off by the early 2010s.

 

[SBLAST91]

Most gaming magazines have died off due to people using the internet to get gaming news these days, the UK playstation magazines ended back in 2021

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Here they shifted to being about old games, since their audience is more likely to care about reading off paper; many are mail-order only

It's a shame because unlike journos they always felt like average nerds who were just very passionate and had fun writing about games

 

[Bonkers225]

They been largely dead for years now. The biggest one left is Game Informer, and that's mainly due to Gamestop memberships.

 

[SBLAST91]

It's a shame because unlike journos they always felt like average nerds who were just very passionate and had fun writing about games

yeah. I also miss the demo discs that typically came with them, it was fun trying out games I wouldn't have thought of trying out otherwise.

 

[Don Patch]

The entirety of print media in on the way out.
Simply cheaper to throw ads and articles onto the net than a magazine.

It would be neat to see a magazine-style site (whatever that might entail) or digital magazines pop up covering games

 

[Lee__Kanker]

yeah. I also miss the demo discs that typically came with them, it was fun trying out games I wouldn't have thought of trying out otherwise.

I still have all my ps1 demo discs! The one with abe's odisee scared the shit out of 6 year old me

The menus are so cool

 

[marky]

From what I read somewhere - it depends on the country.
In Poland, for example, there are 2 gaming magazines left: CD-Action, which has always been a magazine mainly about PC games (it used to be published monthly, now quarterly) and PSX Extreme, which was initially, according to its name, a magazine about Playstation games, and then changed its profile to console games in general. it has been a monthly since the beginning.
Both regularly publish special issues dedicated to retro games and hardware like this one (PSX Extreme even publishes them in a graphic form that resembles the layout of the press from the era):

I also know that in Japan the gaming press is doing well with Famitsu at the top.

 

[Tr4sh_Kun]

They all died in the early to mid 2010s, we had a magazine named Club Nintendo publishing since 1991 but the last issue was published in December 2014 (The Super Smash Bros for 3DS and Wii U issue) before essentially dying.

Everyone uses the internet nowadays and gets their sources from the same two or three sources so the point of a videogame magazine is completely pointless

 

[marky]

Can't find any in the shops in the UK.

What About Retro Gamer UK?

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Also thanks to the demo disc many games have all their cut stuff preserved for the world to see, like the morbid baby and schoolchild enemies from silent hill

 

[Roto]

Japan has so many! I order some randomly from Amazon Japan.

 

[snes9x]

I lived in England from 2008-2010 as a middle schooler and even though magazines were still somewhat relevant in the US I was blown away by how good the brits got it. Good variety, large high quality glossy paper, even feelies for Official Nintendo Magazine and a few others. Still got an old copy of Retro Gamer from like March 2010 I flip through every now and then.

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

Spoiler: Final Fantasy joke that I just HAD to make

Died faster than turn based combat in mainline Final Fantasy games

 

[GardeniaSky]

They been largely dead for years now. The biggest one left is Game Informer, and that's mainly due to Gamestop memberships.

That's gone too. They recently removed it from Pro.

 

[snes9x]

I can't say I was too bummed out over GameInformer because it had been glorified ad copy for GameStop for like 15 years at this point, but there's still something to be said for the last of the big three gaming mags go under (EGM and GamePro being the other two)

 

[YuriSukiSan]

It's the same story here in France, most if not all publications moved online and then they fell in to irrelevance when the social media starting taking off, sites like Gamespot kind of took over then youtube very slowly crept in to wipe them out as well! I'm not saying there still aren't publications but the quality of writing, reviewing or just generally well written articles that were common place are rarer than they've ever been.

 

[Xeno]

That's gone too. They recently removed it from Pro.

They nuked the whole website without warning too.

 

[PhaseJump]

Print has been dying for decades. The internet killed gaming magazines. Groups on different social media platforms have risen out of old review crews to give personality based content and offer opinions on games, then it becomes an issue of paywalling subscriptions.

The closest thing to old gaming mag experience you could get over the last few decades was listening to Jeff Gerstmann on Giant Bomb and the Nextlander guys, before that all fell apart and they went to separate op-ed podcasting.

Reviews are borderline useless now, but watching a crew of opinionated personalities shoot the shit, cover events, and hang out to play games is where the leftover value has been shaken out of it.

 

[Zacek]

That's different in Japan, where you still can find magazines like Famitsu and Dengeki on your 7 Eleven.