Feature: Changing Trends Affect Gaming Magazine Market
The huge surge in home ownership of PCs and gaming consoles has created some fertile publishing ground for consumer magazine groups over the last few years. The PC leisure and internet market – excluding gaming titles – has gone from strength to strength. Ten years ago this sector was served by just one title, What PC. There are now more than 25 PC and internet titles and according to the January-June ABCs the sector grew by 48% annually. Even the men’s lifestyle market, which has seen growth of more the 600% since the beginning of the decade, can’t compare to the whopping 3,840% growth in sales created by the adoption of the PC and internet.
A similar trend has been emerging in the PC and console gaming market where the huge success of the Playstation has spawned a host of tips, cheats and gaming guide magazines. The Nintendo 64 also produced a number of dedicated titles although its take-up never matched that of the Playstation. Between July 1996 and 1997 sector sales increased by 190%; in the July-December 1999 ABC audit growth had dropped to just over 15%. According to the most recent figures, PC and games console titles are in decline – sales fell by 5.3% year on year.
The PC gaming market has just two dedicated titles – PC Gamer and PC Gaming World – and both held sales relatively steady in this audit. PCs remain fundamentally the same, becoming faster and more powerful. It is the console titles which are the lifeblood of the sector and the console hardware market goes through periods of transition as old machines become outdated and new ones are released. This transition is happening now and so it is no surprise that there has been a downturn in consumer mag sales. The Nintendo, for example, has almost had its day – accordingly every Nintendo magazine bar new entrant Nintendo World saw circulation decline. The Playstation is about to be superseded by Sony’s Playstation II and is now showing its age as a console – the Official Playstation Magazine lost 85,000 copies year on year.
The gaming sector was only saved from a steeper decline by the emergence of titles catering for the first of the next generation of consoles, Sega’s Dreamcast. Four new Dreamcast titles entered the audit this time boosting the market’s sales by more than 100,000 copies. Whilst the gaming magazine market is currently in a lull, Dreamcast, Playstation II and Nintendo’s mysterious Dolphin/StarCube machine should all breathe new life into the sector.