Feature: Playing The Computer Game Market

While the computer gaming magazine market as a whole has seen some shrinkage over the past couple of years, the total circulation for the largest sector within the market, Playstation magazines, remains well over half a million. Importantly for advertisers, the target readership for these titles is men in their late teens/early twenties, an age group which is reasonably hard to reach.

The dominant force here is Future Publishing, whose five titles represent 60% of circulation for the sector. Future holds the license to publish the “official” titles for the Playstation consoles, and it seems that this is worth having. Official UK Playstation, with a circulation of 133,168 and Official UK Playstation 2, with a circulation of 82,109, lead the market in terms of both dedicated Playstation and general gaming titles, outstripping both Future’s “unofficial” Playstation titles and rivals from Paragon and Computec.

In fact the market leading title, covering the original version of the console, has seen its circulation more than halve year on year. This reflects a fact that challenges the whole gaming market; consoles are launched and become obsolete within a fairly short space of time. With the first version of the Playstation giving way in popularity to the PS2, the demand is growing for magazines such as Future’s PSM2 and Official Playstation 2, which have seen period on period increases in circulation, having launched last year, and Paragon’s P2.

The “next big thing” for gaming is expected to be Microsoft’s first venture into the games console market, Xbox, launched in the US this month, and in the UK early next year. Once again, the “official” title will come from the Future stable, whose subsidiary OXM has already released a preview version of the title that will launch next year. Future will also launch an unofficial title, XGamer in February, while Paragon, the second largest publisher in the Playstation market, has already launched its XBM title (see Paragon Aims For New Console Market), hoping to tap into Microsoft’s pre-launch hype.

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