Future swallows Imagine in £14.2m publishing takeover.
This story has been circulating for a few days, thought it was about time we discussed it here.
I am a Retro Gamer mag subscriber as I am sure a few of us are, any concerns over the takeover?
Well with Future publishing's past they take no prisoners on bumping magazine series to the curb and have axed a good few back in old days.., but if he is to be believed the editor of Retro gamer magazine Darran Jones has assured folks that Retro Gamer magazine is in the top three highest sellers for imagine publishing and is going nowhere which hopefully it won't.
I'm hearing though that GamesTM will be getting the axe as it's the closest to their own Magazine Edge magazine which I suppose is inevitable but still those people who work on the magazine will possibly lose their jobs because of it, fingers crossed they be moved to work on other Future publishing's mags.
Also it seem future publishing themselves are getting on the band wagon of releasing their very first Bookazine on retro titles called "Classic Gaming Volume 1" See here (https://www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/gaming-guides-and-specials/classic-gaming/) for more details, upon seeing this in Ireland's answer to "W.H.Smyths or Barns and Noble", Easons priced at a wobbling â,¬17.95 for a 148 page bookazine I thought was crazy, let's hope this doesn't spill over onto price hikes for RG magazine or any other. But as I flicked through the bookazine, I discovered the very strange manner in which the magazine is laid out? And makes absolutely no sense at all, okay I'll explain. After the index the first machine covered is the ZX Spectrum, fair enough followed by the a completely mis matched console the Sega MegaDrive, then the Amiga? WTF? It's like the bookazine is Bipolar ? Completely and utterly unarranged in context of each machine before and after, so they are most definitely hopping on the retro gaming community magazine gravy train.
But back to IP publishing, if I'm being honest I think future need to curb the amount of freelance junolism with heavy and stricter guide lines on the amount of research they carry out on their articles as with a lot recently over the last few months, there has been article in the magazine that simply missed massive oppertunities to explore Both ideals or details completely missed or unanswered because the the free lancer wasn't up to full scratch to whom they were dealing with or knew their background extensively, this has happened on many occasion and has been publicly brough to RG forums on many occasion only to be stomped by management as seen as trolling and belittling the magazine as a whole which is a crock of shit to begin with. But I'm hoping Futture publishing will seperate those that think half assed research and easy pickings money wise will be ironed out. After all we are paying their fees and I certainly won't continue too unless it steps up a notch, so hopefully they won't just settle for page fillers and hopefully allow for more adult inspired content in retro gaming coverage, the pros the cons, that sort of thing.
That's my two cent, that enough discussion for ya :)
I'm not subscribed to Retro Gamer but you do have to wonder what such a takeover will do.
I'm not too worried. Apparently RG is doing better than ever currently, doing well in the US as well. I subscribe to the mag (its so cheap to subscribe) and i'm happy supporting the magazine every month for 3 quid or so. Said it a 1000 times but its great that in the year 2016 theres a monthly retro mag out there.
Be a shame if GamesTM goes though, i dont subscribe to the mag but i've picked up the odd one and its pretty cool.
The good thing is the articles dont get 'old', i regularly go back to some old favourite issues (eg Issue 48 - Speccy one) and others. Theres some articles every month which dont appeal to me but theres a lot of arcade content and 8 bit stuff, again its difficult to please everyone but happy to support the mag
I saw that new retro mag (Classic Gaming Volume 1) which i wanted to get but i cant believe they dont have an eMag version. I get paper versions of RG but all the specials i now buy electronically via the app.
Same as you pal, I support the mag for a couple of reasons.. but mainly for the fact we actually have a mag like this in circulation..
Quote from: psj3809 on July 15, 2016, 09:30:46 AM
I saw that new retro mag (Classic Gaming Volume 1) which i wanted to get but i cant believe they dont have an eMag version. I get paper versions of RG but all the specials i now buy electronically via the app.
Strange? As I have it in PDF form, upon reading through it more depth it pales in comparison to anything RG have done, maybe the team they had working on it or the writers were playing it safe, I don't know, put there are some good pieces in there but I just can't get past the format layout of the bookazine's order of machines.
Quote from: psj3809 on July 15, 2016, 09:30:46 AMThe good thing is the articles dont get 'old'...
I totally agree. I've kept all mine for this reason (back to around issue 30!).
It is a good mag and, like you also said, worth the subscription money. Sometimes its off the mark for my interests but more often than not makes up for it.
It'd be a shame if it went...
Future publishing would be complete fools to get rid of retro gamer, when you consider the audience it has internationally, no I don't think the magazine will be shelved in any compactly, in fact I'm hoping it will go from strength to strength. There have being some great articles within the magazine no doubt about that, but there have also being some serious missed opportunities too, when I created the Atari Gamer magazine series, the intention was to not simply have a magazine sing praise about how good the system was, I wanted to reveal the screw ups , the flaws and what went wrong or why, so although being a massive fan of these machines I felt it only right that the research in to both good and bad have to be included, when I read the latest issue of RG, it's always the pro-life side of things, you rarely read that such and such was going on, meanwhile this was happening, or that was canned because....
Maybe it's just me that feels this way and maybe why I find "Lost Dragon's" article interview work so brilliant, because of the research on those he interviews has been very well carried out and doesn't miss a thing and has simply set it stone for all to now to pick to bones from if intending to do future articles etc. and also as a historian on these platforms the stuff uncovered in mind blowing, yet RG is repeating content over and over and covering stuff we've read before, I don't know, I know we are lucky to have a commercial magazine dedicated to the subject matter, but with so many books about it now, could in the long term do damage to retro gamer magazine perhaps?
I haven't bought RG for a couple of years now, I just wait for their specials and get all the best bits on a subject together!