JAN. 7, 2009 • Ziff Davis Media shuttered its storied Electronic Gaming Monthly Magazine, and sold its 1Up Digital Network assets and many of the latter’s staff to Hearst’s Ugo Entertainment Division. The Jan. 2009 issue of EGM was the last issue of the magazine. Declining demand for print publications by consumers and advertisers was cited as the main reason for the closure. While establishing excellent viewership growth since it was launched four years ago, 1Up was said to lack the scale to compete and become profitable on its own.
Impact: Top-tier consumer game magazines once occupied a major role in selling video games. Before the Internet became pervasive in 1999, consumers could only go to print to get news on what was coming, and to learn what to stay away from. That gave print editors power, and publishers were forced to take notice of editorial market analysis. During the last decade advertising and subscription revenue has declined severely – shrinking magazine staff, budgets and pages to shadows of their former selves. Today, most remaining print game publications are superfluous to influencing the direction of the video games industry. As publishers grapple with successfully charting what gamers will want tomorrow, they may come to miss the strong print players who knew their consumers best.
