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26 MCV 20/02/09
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MEDIA SPECIAL: IMAGINE
Imagine the possibilities Future’s major rival in the specialist games media space owns some of the biggest magazines on the market – and is gearing up for a major online launch. James Batchelor speaks to MD Damian Butt… Tell us about your ABC results. Overall, I’m pretty pleased. Gaming magazines have bounced back quite well. A lot of people were quite worried that games magazines were suffering near the end of 2008 and that 2009 would be a continuation of that, but actually sales have been very encouraging in January and February. We’ve got some nice, strong magazines that are still doing well, so overall we’re pleased and looking forward to 2009. Are there any plans to expand your print portfolio this year? Probably not that I can see, at the moment. We either occupy or have launched in pretty much every area. We’re not keen on cluttering up the shelves, so we’re focusing on building and developing the titles that we’ve got. For gaming, it’s going to be massively online for us, as well as driving what we’ve got. But on a wider perspective, we’ll be launching four to five new magazines this year and we’ll also be acquiring new titles as well.
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BUTT: “We’ve got some nice, strong magazines that are still doing well; we’re looking forward to this year.”
really affected the core base of games magazine readers. You’ve still got the people who appreciate the fact that they’ve got a magazine in their hands that’s trustworthy. It’s mainly been the floating readership that has been mopped up by the gaming websites, so the occasional spikes that you used to get at certain key times aren’t as
We’ve got low debt and we’re a strong company with good revenue. We’re seeing 2009 as a period of opportunity. Damian Butt, MD
Acquisitions are something of a hot topic at the moment, because there are so many coming up. Have gaming websites had a significant effect on your business in the last 12 months? I wouldn’t necessarily say there’s been a pronounced effect in the last 12 months. Generally, have they had an effect? Of course they have, but it hasn’t
efficient and as well placed to ride out the recession as any company in the UK. We’ve got a very strong team. The portfolio, the spread and the risk profile we’ve got are very good. We’ve got low debt and we’re a very strong company with good revenue, so we’re seeing 2009 and 2010 as being a big period of opportunity and growth. The fact that we’re launching a big website and new magazines has been giving people here confidence that we’ve got a steady hand on the tiller. Some have said that NowGamer is a symbol that we’re in a very strong position and not too worried about the economic outlook.
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pronounced as they used to be. The net effect is that the sales trends of the magazines tend to be a lot smoother throughout the year without all these crazy variations. The one thing worth mentioning is that the websites we’ve had and the ones we’ve launched have had a fantastically positive effect on driving subscriptions for the magazines that we do have, as well as driving sales of back issues for other products.
What do you see in store for specialist print magazines in 2009? The bloated publishers, the ones that have a lot of debt and are a bit too fat, will expire or be cut down quite significantly. I can easily see a lot of acquisitions happening, a lot of specialist magazines being acquired or dying completely. You’ll probably see a trimming of some of the portfolios, as well as entire companies and groups being put up for sale or closing down. The companies that are well run or have diverse revenue streams should survive quite happily and probably take advantage of the opportunities, then emerge stronger out the other side. Certainly, I’m not worried at all – in fact, I’m quite looking forward to it. It’s nothing but opportunities. We’ve very well funded, have low debt, are in a very good position and still very cash-generative. How are you adapting your business to survive the recession? No matter how well run a business, you’re always going to see some effects. But I think we’re as well run, as
ABC RESULTS AT A GLANCE Title
Jan 2008
Jan 2009
Play
24,007
26,464
X360
30,203
26,068
10% 14%
360
13,007
12,939
0.05%
GamesTM
22,284
21,677
3%
You closed nRevolution this year – do you have any plans to bring it back, or will you find another way to cater to the Nintendo market? We have no plans to bring it back – in fact, we think there are going to be more casualties in the Nintendo market. We’re focusing on covering Nintendo solely through NowGamer. We think we’ll be able to do this much better through the site and because of the audience profile for Nintendo, it’s more suited to the sort of people that would visit NowGamer. Plus, we cover Nintendo in GamesTM.
NOWGAMER Imagine boss Damian Butt discusses new online venture NowGamer: “This is our first big website platform, it’s new technology and it’s also the basis for all of our big sites coming up, so for us it’s absolutely critical and it gives us a brilliant opportunity to get all of that original content and make it available online. “It is different from the others: it’s very clean, it’s very readable, it’s uncluttered. It uses the latest technology, which means you can do all sorts of really cool customisation tricks with it. It’s very easy to use, thanks to the intuitive search and filtering techniques, which allows for easy access to more than 5,000 reviews going back to 1995 on all formats. “The amount of content we’ve got in there is good, especially with the wealth of retro content on there thanks to Retro Gamer, which you don’t see on any other gaming sites.”