We’re coming up to the first month in 20 years that a brand new Electronic Gamer Monthly will not grace store shelves, providing pretty pictures of upcoming games and rumours for the gaming world to slather over. It was a noticeable hit, one that still resonates throughout various gaming communities, and in the spirits of a lot of gamers who have had a childhood token taken away swiftly and perhaps a bit prematurely. It certainly isn’t the last gaming magazine on stands, however, with all of the official console magazines still holding prominent positions and other magazines like GameStop’s Game Informer still managing to find a way to soldier on, but there is still is a sense that things are not going well. This of course is compounded this week, with Future Publishers (publishers of Nintendo Power, Official Playstation Magazine, Official Xbox Magazine and various PC gaming mags) have seen significant declines over the last few months, and blame the lack of advertising budgets in the US and UK, as well as a diminishing PC gaming audience for their financial woes.

I have been playing perhaps a unhealthy amount of attention to the 1UP dismissals and the aftermath that has occurred as a result of the dismantling of EGM and the sale to UGO Hearst. There has been a lot of information trickling out from ex-staff in the form of podcasts and newly formed web projects revealing the reasons for the collapse of the magazine, which do fall inline with a lot of what Future is using as their primary excuse: the advertise market is dwindling significantly and the money just isn’t there. Gaming magazines are like any other publications where the only reason they can make it to print at all is due to the support of advertisers, which is why you’re often treated to a deluge of full page pleading for you to buy someone’s products, and it’s a fair price to pay for the content that you are delivered. With EGM’s inability to expand to a wider variety of advertisers, it seemed to many in the know that the writing was on the wall for the magazine and its collapse was just an inevitability, as sad as the whole ordeal is.

Future did note in their release that online ad revenues had increased over the period of time that saw print ads drop significantly. With many companies pushing themselves into retreat when it comes to lucrative expenditures, advertising seems to be a particular area that has seen significant cutbacks. It doesn’t seem to be halting the online advertising, which seems to show the strength that a lot of companies attribute to the audience and value they get through that stream. With many companies utilizing services that are more generic, pushing ads via keywords through services like Google AdWords, and a lot of companies cutting exclusive site designs and dynamic front page inclusions with major online publications. Considering the ability to block ads that comes with online services, the fact that this revenue stream is flourishing even with companies tightening their belts demonstrates the value of these websites to the publishers in getting the word out.

The other issue that Future stated, the decline in the PC gaming market, is a bit of a shock. While the same line has been repeated quite a bit through various channels, it is often debunked as a misconception and a repetition of things people say every ten years or so about the oft-overlooked group of gamers. It does hold true that PC gaming doesn’t carry the same clout it once had among publications, and while console gaming as always remained relatively popular, the veritable explosion of sales over the last few years and the difficulty that comes in measuring the expansion (if any) of PCs for gaming specifically, perhaps advertisers are finding themselves switching their ad dollars into channels that are more suited to an online, tech-savvy group. With Future in control of several popular magazines like PC Gamer and PC Zone, it would be a shame and a shortsighted mistake to see them use those magazines as a scapegoat for dwindling profits in a particular tough market.

Print is dead, like PC gaming is dead, is something that a lot of online groups seem to push. Of course, there’s a bit of a conflict of interest when it comes to the former, but the growth in one market versus the decline in the other is a telling sign. Considering the difficult market, a decline in online ads would show it being on par with magazines, but once a significant weakness has been shown, it may spell the end of some publications that may shift their interests into an online space. It doesn’t seem to me that print is going anywhere. Newspapers haven’t been forced out of the landscape by blogs or online services because they cater to a particular market that is still there and is still booming, although some groups are having to find new ways to explore their medium. Gaming magazines are going through a shift of perceived weakness due to the fall of EGM, but Ziff Davis had been a problem child for quite some time. While some groups may take some time to reevaluate their position in the market, this weakness is just an example of companies evolving their strategies based on the times. Online advertising has growth because of the increasing audience that gaming publications have with a casual audience who may be into the medium for the first time, while those who would be latched onto print may be more like a bastion of the “hardcore”. Don’t expect to see the gaming section of the magazine rack empty any time soon, but clearly no one is safe from poor management and a failure to see the writing on the wall.