(1st Jan 2020 - 31st Dec 2020; comparisons with 1st Jan to 31st Dec 2019)
PlayStation Official Magazine - UK: no longer registered with ABC (last audit 18,776) PC Gamer: no longer registered with ABC (last audit 10,942) EDGE: 13,979 (source: Future Publishing) Retro Gamer: 20,490 (source: Future Publishing) Official Xbox Magazine: DEFUNCT
GQ: 95,298 (down from 102,517) T3: 32,115 (down from 34,477) Men's Health: 97,697 (down from 120,273) Top Gear Magazine: 59,472 (down from 82,685) Q: DEFUNCT WIRED: 48,087 (down from 50,033) EMPIRE: 72,538 (down from 81,221) Total Film: 26,705 (down from 31,587) Sainsbury's Magazine: 108,756 (down from 128,133) Waitrose Magazine: 665,877 (down from 676,902; free for card holders) The Sunday Times Travel Magazine: DEFUNCT BBC Music: 25,734 (down from 27,394) Country Life: 40,317 (down from 40,560) Radio Times: 497,852 (down from 529,263) What's On TV: 690,617 (down from 767,786) TV Choice: 1,041,826 (down from 1,101,077) Private Eye: 236,705 (down from 240,505)- July to December 2020 OK! Magazine: 84,320 (down from 116,341) Take A Break: 369,449 (down from 416,695) Hello! Magazine: 166,173 (down from 206,900) Closer: 106,308 (down from 155,368) Grazia: 85,606 (down from 102,427) What HiFi: 24,844 Four Four Two: 27,935 Classic Rock: 35,652 BBC Gardeners' World: 226,806 Garden News: 39,613 Garden Answers: 58,289 The Field: 22,424 Woman's Weekly: 205,091 CHAT! This is Great Banter, It Really Is: 150,288 Woman!: 103,323 Woman's Own: 95,524 Heat: 73,455 Shooting and Conservation BANG! And The Bird Is Dead: 134,339 Angling Times: 18,497 Bird Watching: 16,932 Classic Cars: 27,279 Trout & Salmon: 18,483
Newspapers - December 2020
The Sun: no longer publicly audited with ABC The Sun on Sunday: no longer publicly audited with ABC Daily Mail: 998,047 (down from 1,141,178) Mail on Sunday: 865,439 (down from 954,497) London Metro: 478,720 (down from 860,225) Evening Standard: 489,830 (down from 796,640) The Sunday Times: no longer publicly audited with ABC Daily Mirror: 381,146 (down from 451,386) The Times: no longer publicly audited with ABC Sunday Mirror: 314,314 (down from 366,420) The Daily Telegraph: no longer publicly audited with ABC Daily Express: 249,568 (down from 295,079) Daily Star: 229,752 (down from 282,723) Sunday Express: 221,557 (down from 255,087) The Sunday Telegraph: no longer publicly audited with ABC The i: 148,927 (down from 217,760) Daily Star Sunday: 143,830 (down from 167,601) The Observer: 147,296 (down from 163,449) FT: 105,358 (down from 162,429) Sunday People: 120,429 (down from 142,563) The Guardian: 114,168 (down from 133,412)
Sales now so bad in some cases that the publishers don't want you to know about them. A couple managing to weather the storm, however (such as Private Eye).
Private Eye's stats are impressive. There seem to have been a lot of reader letters recently from gammons cancelling their subscriptions because Private Eye has been criticising Boris Johnson. The loss of sales might be more related to that than coronavirus.
Last edited by Memento Mori on Thu Feb 11, 2021 4:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Some of these must be on the verge of closure, no way they can survive. Even if half of the pages are adverts these days the ad companies are not going to pay much if there's nobody bloody looking at them!
This month was a bit odd, it was another 'special edition', which would seem to indicate something is awry somewhere. Staffing issues would be my guess.
I noticed last month's subscriber issue however was going for silly money on eBay. I think a few even sold in excess of £100!
This month was a bit odd, it was another 'special edition', which would seem to indicate something is awry somewhere. Staffing issues would be my guess.
I noticed last month's subscriber issue however was going for silly money on eBay. I think a few even sold in excess of £100!
I can't understand why?! I guess because it had the exclusive info on the new Hollow Knight? The going rate seems to be around £40 now.
For me, the latest issue was the final straw. For a while I've felt like it lost its way and just didn't get around to unsubscribing. I have almost the complete set up to now...
It's pot luck what they decide to review, and for quite a while they've dedicated multiple pages to iOS game reviews. Some people might enjoy that, but it's not really relevant to me.
Also, I'm in my early 30's and my eyesight is okay, but they make such terrible colour choices that there's often no contrast at all between the background and text. I think someone wrote into the letters section about it a while back, but if anything they just made it worse!
I stopped buying Total Film after i found that the price would be something different each month.
I'd expect to pay £3.99 (at the time) only to find at the till they'd sneakily put it up to £5.99, then the next month it would be something else entirely.
Future's gaming mag empire appears to have virtually disappeared now. The PlayStation mag will probably cease soon, following Nintendo and Xbox in moving out of the magazine market. I *think* that this is the first time we've seen a figure published for Retro Gamer, though?
I've written plenty of stuff before about how sad it is that gaming mags are in such increasing decline. It seems to be a general thing that people won't pay for magazines; a combination of high pricing and a common thought that "I can read on the internet for free" means that they can't survive.
The problem with gaming mags is most easy content will be common knowledge by the time it's out (announcements, news, reviews), and the more interesting deep dive stuff will be much more difficult to do enmass in the time restrictions they have due to requiring more research / interviews. I'd say the trend of how people consider reviews has changed too, people relying much more on the aggregate opinion rather than the text in a single review.
I suspect retro gaming magazines are going to be the future of this particular industry, Jawa. Written by, and for, enthusiasts. They'll be like our generation's model collecting books or something Although, I grant you, our generation has those as well.
Corazon de Leon wrote:I suspect retro gaming magazines are going to be the future of this particular industry, Jawa. Written by, and for, enthusiasts. They'll be like our generation's model collecting books or something Although, I grant you, our generation has those as well.
I'd agree with that, plenty of topics for them to choose from that aren't time sensitive. While they'll have loads of competition from online still, it does seem to be the best way to mitigate the main issues with the medium.
Yeah, I think you're right about enthusiasts taking over games mag publishing from the commercial sector. I have in the past purchased Freeze64 - a regular A5, colour, 32-page mag devoted to the Commodore 64 - which is produced by one person and is a great read. The recent NintyFresh mag is also developed by a small group of enthusiasts.
Hey, maybe these smaller 'zines are the way forward!
I can only presume that PC Gamer is still going because it's being propped up by sales of the US version, which is basically an abridged UK edition and printed on lower grade paper; as to look at sales are way under that of Official Xbox Magazine (Future appeared to blame its abrupt closure on Covid). Unless the license was up for renewal and Microsoft wanted too much for it? Unlike Nintendo, I haven't read anything that indicated Microsoft themselves wanted it closed.
Totally agree on the Edge point about what’s selected for review. They’ve always been a bit like that by not reviewing sports games. So much stuff about mobile and (in my view) dry parts of the industry when I just want making of and time extend oh, and mr biffo
Corazon de Leon wrote:I suspect retro gaming magazines are going to be the future of this particular industry, Jawa. Written by, and for, enthusiasts. They'll be like our generation's model collecting books or something Although, I grant you, our generation has those as well.
I'd agree with that, plenty of topics for them to choose from that aren't time-sensitive. While they'll have loads of competition from online still, it does seem to be the best way to mitigate the main issues with the medium.
Yes exactly, to you and Jawa. I think the time-sensitivity thing is a major issue for games magazines and their refusal to move away from the "news-reviews" format is part of what's killing them. People don't need magazines for that anymore, what's needed is in-depth feature stories, making-of articles, and industry-focused information that isn't easily available on the web. Imagine, for example, an oral history of something like the release and marketing of the PS1 in the UK, with a fully referenced set of interviews and conversations with the people involved, reaction from punters who were there at the time, or attended the club launches of PS1s etc, and a timeline of events.*
I genuinely believe content like that would sell good enough numbers to warrant the work that would need to go into it.
*I believe this already exists, so possibly not the best example, but it is an interesting topic!