Ziff Davis Working to Sell 1up, EGM, GFW

Ziff Davis, parent company for the 1up website and the magazines Electronic Gaming Monthly and Games for Windows, is working to sell off its gaming group. Simon Carless, at GameSetWatch, pointed out the company's interest in active offers for the package. Ziff's games group apparently reached just about the break-even point last year, and along with the sale of Ziff's Consumer Small Business group (PC Magazine, etc) essentially represents the end of Ziff Davis as a publishing force. From the article: "As I alluded to in a recent post on game magazine circulations, I do personally feel like Ziff might have closed Official PlayStation Magazine a little earlier than they might otherwise have done, in order to make the Game Group more attractive to potential purchasers, who obviously care most about 1UP. Which makes sense, because in most cases (prestige low-circulation magazines such as Edge notwithstanding), circs and revenues in consumer print are only going to trickle down over the next few years."

Who buys these things?

[realmolo]

Computer and videogame magazines are almost *completely* pointless. If there are two subjects that the internet has covered, it's computers and videogames. There is literally NO information a magazine could possibly offer you that you can't get for free on the internet. Plus, you'll get it WAY before it reaches print.

They had their run. I enjoyed reading some of those mags back in the day. But I haven't bought any since about 1997.

Re:Who buys these things?

[RyoShin]

Yes, but you don't always have a PC handy when you have time to read about such things.

Assuming you even have a laptop, do you know how risky, akward, and annoying it is to bring into the bathroom?

Would you bring your laptop on the bus or in a cab with you just so you can read about it on the way to work?

While the internet gives you a greater number of sources, real-time information, and counter-opinions, magazines give you an easily portable, disposable, and concise form for whatever topic you're interested in. I have a few magazines that I subscribe to, and read a bit each day before bed. That's not as easy to do on the PC.

I agree that print media is dying, though. I blame it in part to advertising- as annoying as banner ads on the web are, print ads are much the same. Just about every other page in GameInformer is some ad, more often than not for something that interests me little. And this is after I'm already paying for the magazine. It turns off customers. I wonder how much the magazine industry relies on advertising now- if a magazine when ad-free (or even cut the number of ads in half), would it still be able to survive on subscriptions?

And, to quash some arguments I'm sure will arise:
-not everyone has a crackberry
-printing off an online magazine will cost me about as much as getting a real magazine myself, between the cost of time, paper, and ink
-no, I can't use my work's printer