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Future has confirmed to VG247 that longstanding UK PlayStation mag PSW has closed.
It had a final ABC of 24,118.
The publisher has redeployed one member of the team within the business and is currently in consultation with the magazine’s other four team members.
“It’s always incredibly sad when we close a title as established as PSW, but the decision was taken in response to decreasing demand,” said Future games boss James Binns.
“By focusing our efforts on Official PlayStation Magazine and a single independent PlayStation title in PSM3, we can strengthen our position in delivering the number one and number two print titles in the sector.
“We continue to invest in our traditional print brands, but games is a rapidly changing sector, so our portfolio needs to constantly evolve to meet the needs of consumers in a vibrant and diverse market.”
The publication was launched by Computec in 2000, and was later bought by Future in 2003 along with Computec UK’s other games titles, such as Xbox World.
Future said yesterday that it is declining to publish six monthly ABC figures this year.
Viewing 48 responses
Johnny Cullen said:
Shame.
It was a magazine I got consistently every month from June 2001 – July 2008.
Good luck to the staff, hope they find new posts.
Retroid said:
It was more than a bit crap (IMHO, of course) when I bought it for select freebies, like the Space Ace / Mad Dog McCree / Dragon’s Lair DVDs they spread across this and XBW a while back.
Egon Superb said:
Pity, Ian Dean and Iain White were genuinely nice guys – though the magazine really suffered from a couple of earlier editors who pissed off half the publishers with embargo-breaking and made it hard for the team to get review or preview code.
Jonarob said:
I don’t read the mag (or any console specific mag for that matter), but these decisions always surprise me. Presumably there’ll be a PS4 and a PSP2, so why not keep “PlayStation World” and get rid of the awfully titled PSM3? They’re only gonna rename it PSM4 when the PS4 comes out, and it also kind of excludes the PSP market. We’re just talking names here, of course.
Blerk said:
I used to pick this up on occasion ‘back in the day’. They were a bit ‘lad mag’, but they weren’t too bad on the whole. They were certainly a lot more honest than OPSM was at that point.
I’ve still got a bunch of the video DVDs they used to bundle on the front kicking around somewhere.
Dannybuoy said:
Tough times for mags. It would help if some of them weren’t SO SHIT… I just can’t stand mags that pad out their articles with banter about the other members in the team getting drink etc and skimp on juicy details. Can’t remember which PS3 mag it is but there is one that does this all the time. Edge sometimes has it’s head so far up it’s own ass I can’t stand it but it’s the mag I return to most often. Games TM is ok but I’m not bothered about the retro section at the back so it usually just gets a flick through at the newsagents. Maybe once the slim isout and numbers of PS3 owners grows, mag sales might pick up a bit. I guess the web is the major factor here. I check gaming sites more than hourly so most mags are out of date for me before they even get printed! Unless they have some exclusive content then I’m hard pressed to spend £4-£5 on them.
BraveArse said:
I’ve only ever bought GamesTm and Edge for years now. I stopped buying ( at the risk of sounding prudish ) the other gaming mags when they became little more than pr0n ad catalogues interspersed with the odd review and article. Not because I object to that kind of thing per se but a/ because I couldn’t read the magazines in front of my little kid and b/ because it said a LOT about what the publishers thought of the gaming demographic. And I don’t see myself as a puerile over-testosteroned teen TYVM.
OrphanageExplosion said:
“Embargos” are just part of the problems that have made journalists the lapdogs of the PRs, when it should be the other way around. Readers come first. End of story.
blackdreamhunk said:
yea console game devs love console gaming soooo much they love going bankuprt!
oi oi oi said:
Console install base is growing, magazine circulations are falling across the board
If you had a £1m to invest in a gaming website or a bunch of magazines which would you invest in?
Blerk said:
I never quite understood why a single publisher does multiple magazines for the same format. Why split your customer base like that? Isn’t one single-format mag per platform enough?
blackdreamhunk said:
console gaming is dying, by next year it will be dead! high production costs in a recession will only be worse and cause alot more companies to go bankupt.
as for mags they are dead we have the internet.
No_PUDding said:
So you’d have to assume, they’d all jump ship to PC’s, becuase Crysis did so well.
Dn’t know why it didn’t happen sooner!
Blerk said:
Console gaming will be dead by next year? You’ve really outdone yourself this time, bdh!
blackdreamhunk said:
crysis sold alot better than must console games it sold like over 2 mill and still selling.
blackdreamhunk said:
NO I am not out of my self it’s called high production costs, a decline and recession.
No_PUDding said:
And you’re suggesting that Crysis (and every PC game), costs less to develop than any console game?
blackdreamhunk said:
Yes it does ant that is fact too. compare killzone 2 that costs 50 million to make and compare that to crysis that only cost 20 million.
crysis being a much better game too. By the way you would be crazy to spend $100 on any game. Yes those console games will go up in price and less and less people will buy them.
Hunam said:
Don’t feed the troll guys!
blackdreamhunk said:
you can think what you want but truth speaks for it self!I expect a bigger decline never year. I have been right about the decline. In fact I have been right a number of things.
So call me names all you want, call me troll all you want it’s not going to stop the decline in sales. It’s not going to stop the rising costs. It’s not going to stop companies from going bankuprt.
right now I am laughing at some people at edge web site that did n’t think that a console decline would not have happened.
Captain Fruitloop said:
August 13 2010 -let’s all meet here again, a year from now, to discuss the (by then) recent death of the console games industry.
Or, alternatively, to laugh at bdh.
Blerk said:
What do we think VG247 will be posting about once gaming’s dead?
No_PUDding said:
Killzone 2 will NEVER have cost 60 million (as the reports stated). Believe me, I have had this conversation many times.
But Crysis will have been much the same, becuase it was couple with engine and technology development.
blackdreamhunk said:
Oh christmas sales are not going to be good. nintendos console gaming will be dead. Ps3 will not have a good come back even with the ps3 slim.
this console gen is finshed
No_PUDding said:
@Blerk xD
No_PUDding said:
No sooner do TEA and G1GAHURTZ become awesome, and Shatner leaves. A proper crazy arrives.
blackdreamhunk said:
wow people like to put words in my mouth
it cost not 60 million to make killzone 2, It cost sony 50 million to make that game. Kill zone 2 is not in par with crysis sorry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRWRskYLdno
No_PUDding said:
No, but you like to read (VGChartz) reports wrong. It said 60 million.
And then reports came later that it cost just over 21 million.
Which is the average for an HD generation game, on the PC as well as the console.
blackdreamhunk said:
Oh I see, I must hve miss that article.some how I still don’t beleave it cost 20 million for sony to make. not when they have a crazy hard cell to code for.
No_PUDding said:
So even if that’s the case, surely the 360 is easier and cheaper to develop for than the PC?
blackdreamhunk said:
Oh really, it cheaper to make 360 games what a joke.
It’s fact it cheaper to make a pc game than it is a console game. It’s also why console gamers pay more for their games too. Oh and that price of games is going to get bigger as pubishers lose more money on consoles.
the very reason pc gaming has more games than console is because you don’t have the same kind of fees that consoles do.
Patrick Garratt said:
Blerk, re multiple single-format mags – To sell more ads.
Captain Fruitloop said:
Wait, Crytek are now developing console versions of their games, after openly highlighting how many PC sales they’ve lost due to games piracy.
Why are the developers of top-of-the-range PC games going into the console market, if that market’s got less than a year to live?
blackdreamhunk said:
One word greed! Oh they like to back stab their fan base too with dum commets. One more thing console gamin will never ever make the kind of money pc gaming does ever.
Hunam said:
COMETS!
oi oi oi said:
Shut up!
No_PUDding said:
He’s making more and more sense!
FUCK YOU DEVELOPERS!
LAZY, GREEDY AND STUPID!
Why don’t they just quit making games altogether? That would make everyone really happy.
Hunam said:
BDH has no idea that Console gaming makes 5x+ more income than PC game per year does he?
G1GAHURTZ said:
Yeah… but don’t tell him, because while he doesn’t know…
He’s like, the life of the party!
rrod360lol said:
I’m going to start a band called ‘the dum commets’
OrphanageExplosion said:
@Blerk – about having multiple PS3 mags – it’s all about market share. The more market share you have, the better the ad deals you can secure. PSW has presumably died now because the ad deals for games in print aren’t worth the aggravation any more.
To illustrate how important this is, or rather was, Future spent five million quid on the two Computec mags just to gain that critical mass in the PlayStation and Xbox markets.
Blerk said:
I see. I’m obviously not marketing-flavoured. Thank Christ.
Hunam said:
Can’t future be accused of unfair competition in the gaming market though by having several playstation magazines?
Johnny Cullen said:
Future have multiple Xbox mags as well, three I think. There’s OXM, 360World and something else.
Blerk said:
Is one of those titles on borrowed time as well, then? Or is it just Playstation mags that are underselling?
Hunam said:
I just always wondered why Future was allowed that take over considering it would mean they’d basically own the entire UK gaming magazine market, including publishing it’s own competing magazines.
Maybe I should make a complaint to trading standards.
Michael O'Connor said:
From a quality standpoint, it was a typically amateur gaming magazines that suffers all the conservative pitfalls of the average gaming magazines, such as bad writing and poor scoring, and for that reason alone, it won’t be missed and it can only be a blessing to have one less shitty magazine on the shelves.
Still, it’s never nice for people to lose their jobs. Good look to these guys in finding new work.
scratchy69 said:
It’s sad – it was genuinely funny at times. Mostly when I wrote stuff for it.