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GAMES MEDIA FOCUS
Pressing times Christopher Dring speaks to the video games press on emerging technology, falling ABC figures and the importance of the specialist press...
Print media may be in decline but publishers are bullish over their latest ABC figures, while simultaenously looking to grow their online presence
IT HAS BEEN a challenging time for the UK games media. ABC figures and advertising revenues are falling, forcing the specialists to seek new ways to stay relevant in a market that has become increasingly mainstream. But there’s no denying the sector is still active, with new websites cropping up on an almost weekly basis – while the media giants continue to experiment with technology, from the established podcast and video review, to on-console media and the upcoming iPad. In this special roundtable, an array of names in games media discuss the role of technology, the state of print media and the changing demands of gamers.
But Future is more than magazines – we are a cross-media company and our offer gets better and better. We have cover discs and on-console media such as First Play, and the Golden Joysticks had its best ever year. A lot of what media firms talk about wanting to do, we already do it.
ON THE ABC FIGURES... James Binns, Publishing Director, Future Publishing: 2009 was a tough year for games – many of us thought games were recession resilient, and I’m not the only MCV reader that thought that. Game mags are physical purchases. OXM is £6.49, and a lot of people buy it. When we benchmark our performance, if you compare us to men’s lifestyle we’ve outperformed the FHMs of the world. We have been resilient – no one can defy gravity, but the numbers we have seen we are really proud of.
distribution recently. Hopefully we’ll see the results of that in the coming months. We’ve been pushing forward with developing our distribution this past six to 12 months. You should find the Gamer magazines everywhere you expect to see them, but they’ll also crop up in some places you wouldn’t. But we think the circulation has worked hard because we’re being careful with the product. Yes it’s true, the Gamer magazines have been overlooked by the occasional advertiser. But then again we haven’t had to guarantee the wrong cover-features or too many covers to one publisher, so we’ve got the freedom to go with what’s strongest for business.
Tarik Alozdi, Sales Director, Uncooked Media: 360 Gamer’s ABC result is 18,527, which is a new high for the three-weeker. Play*Gamer wants to perform better and luckily we’ve had good support early on. This has meant investment in
Overall it’s nice to see the product strengths are being noticed because this helps us develop sales via all channels. One of these channels of course is digital editions. ON NEW FORMS OF MEDIA... James Binns: Our No.1 objective on digital is to grow our web audience. It’s our number one mission – it’s more important than other things around that. We have a great array of good podcasts, and we should launch something for iPhone in the coming
months, but the focus is growing that web audience and making a big deal of our on-console media. Anyone can make a podcast but getting content onto an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, as FirstPlay does, is something Future does a better job of than any competitor. Rupert Loman, MD, Eurogamer: We build all of our technology inhouse, which means we can adapt relatively swiftly to changes in users demands and tastes. Only a few years ago websites were little more than