Is Nintendo unwittingly nailing gaming print mag coffins shut?

By Stephen Munn | August 1, 2008

The story of gaming print magazines being in for a rough time is nothing surprising. With publications like Games For Windows Magazine foundering not long ago, it’s old news. Generally, it’s understood that all things being equal, though they are closely tied, 1up.com will scoop EGM’s print magazine every day of the week. Print is just too slow, and exlusives need to be held too long for them to be a normal event.

A couple of years ago, I allowed my GameInformer subscription to lapse, even abandoning access to their “premium” section of the site, GI Unlimited. This was because of a lack of any noticeable coverage of Nintendo’s platforms. Admittedly, this was at a time where there was not much to talk about on the Gamecube, but even with the Game Boy Advance dominating all other platforms, there was almost no mention of it. Whether this was on the assumption that the magazine’s audience didn’t care about the system or not is up to speculation.

I’m seeing this same trend now, as EGM has less coverage of games coming for Nintendo’s platforms every month. However, unlike last generation when I saw this as a sign that Nintendo was struggling, now I see it as a failing by the magazine, and I’ll tell you why.

It’s simple, really. Nintendo is back on top. Whether it’s because of core games or minigames or whatever, people are buying Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS systems and the accessories and games that come out for them. In the same way that these long-running core print mags don’t have sufficient perspective on the audience to review many of the most successful games on these platforms, they don’t have enough of an awareness of the audience’s makeup to try to draw them in as a subscriber base. Nintendo Power’s recent shift to publisher Future US and redesign, coupled with the fact that they exclusively cover games that are available on Nintendo’s platforms, could be bringing it a boost in subscribers along with the wave of people buying Wiis and DSes. This was an opportunity for Nintendo to adopt a mainstream magazine look and feel, and they’ve done so.

With Wii now the dominant console in every territory, and DS the dominant handheld, the other print mags are increasingly becoming “everybody else” publications because it’s easier to do what you know how to than to adapt. I find it fascinating how the gaming print mag market has waned over the years, and a little unnerving to think that the marginalization of traditional games could take some great things like EGM with it. It’s as though the market was rising for video games as they became more mainstream with the launch of the Xbox and monster hits like Halo, when suddenly Nintendo performs a coup, exploding on top of the market and pushing the rest of gaming back to where those who don’t play games imagine it belongs: a dormroom at two in the morning, or in the basement at your parents’ house.

So what do we do? Is the mass market, represented by that grandmother now fighting with you and me in line at Target over a handful of copies of Wii Fit, going to buy a gaming magazine, no matter how mainstream it appears? What I’m seeing is game reviews and recommendations appearing in parenting magazines. Recent issues of these have had articles and features not only on Wii, but on family-friendly games for other platforms. We have one in my house that recommends some downloadable content from PSN and praises it for its value, as Sony’s PlayStation Store tends to have larger games for less money than the alternatives, even though there are fewer of them.

In the end, is it best for these gamer mags to let this potential readership go elsewhere for coverage of this stuff, or is the audience simply too unproven to devote publication resources to? Nintendo has claimed that this “everyone” gaming strategy is designed to bring new people into gaming who will then go on to buy the Marios, Metroids and Zeldas, and of course, though they wouldn’t say this, the Halos, God of Wars and Bioshocks. If this is the case, does this allegedly transitional audience require attention in print publications?

This is an industry that’s always landed on its feet. I will be watching to see what these publications do.