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Games Entertainment

Future Publishing Loses $96 Million 53

Posted by Zonk from the please-don't-kill-edge-and-next-gen dept.
Gamasutra covers a large reported loss by Future Publishing, the UK games-mag publisher of outlets like Edge, the three official UK magazines, and the U.S. Official Xbox Magazine. Their pre-tax losses totaled $95.6 million, while profits were down $39.8 million to $26.7 million. From the article: "Future CEO Stevie Spring commented, 'It is clear with hindsight that during the past two years, Future over-invested in acquisitions and under-invested in organic development. The consequences of this strategy are clearly evident in today's disappointing results ... We have taken a number of steps to strengthen the business. These actions have created significant cost savings which we are fully re-investing in the business.'" More regrettable signs of a a fading print industry.
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Future Publishing Loses $96 Million More

Future Publishing Loses $96 Million

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  • Maybe I'm just getting old but the comings and goings of the game industry at large bore me anymore. I've thrown out my last six copies of PC Gamer without hardly turning a page.

    Or maybe I've just become bored of their endless fanboi masturbatory habits. I can't speak for the magazines listed in the blurb but I don't see a real value to gaming mags that spend as much time patting themselves on the back as they do giving real content about games.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Threni ( 635302 )
      Well, the Edge has always been a little breathless. It was expensive when it launched, and it's still expensive now. And for what? What does it provide that I can't get for free online? And the 'writers' on computer magazines always seem to think they're incredibly amusing, when generally it's a fourth rate, school-yard rehash of Viz magazine, Monty Python and Red Dwarf.
    • I've thrown out my last six copies of PC Gamer without hardly turning a page.

      PC Gamer died years ago when they merged with PC Accelerator. The PC Gaming industry went with them. :(

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by iocat ( 572367 )
        Hey uh... they didn't merge with PCXL. PCXL folded and everyone got subscriptions to PC Gamer instead. I don't think *any* PCXL staff went to PCGamer following that folding, except for maybe Greg Vederman... but no, actually I think he started at PCGamer to begin with.
        • Not to be an ass about it but "The Vede" kinda sucks any way you slice him.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by iocat ( 572367 )
            I like the Vede, but I really miss Bill Trotter, or The Colonel, or whatever his name is. I never play(ed) war games, but I loved reading about them.
    • I ditched the current issue of PC Gamer as it had numerous ads, a section on cell phone games, and very little non-masturbatory content in between the covers. Just another cyclical trend. Once the new next gen consoles are established and someone creates a brilliant PC game that every developer and their mom will want to copy a million times, things should turn around for the magazines.
      • The section on cell phone gaming WAS an ad, if I remember correctly. That doesn't mean it was any less crappy, but at least it means that it was the advertising department's fault it was there instead of the editorial department's.

    • Oh the ironing... (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Or maybe I've just become bored of their endless fanboi masturbatory habits.

      And amazingly, this was posted on Slashdot, without any sense of irony.
    • You must be reading the US edition, which is indeed crap. In terms of geography, I live about halfway between the UK and US, yet the US edition costs a bit more. It also has half the width and much more advertising-per-content, as well as overmuch "eye-candy" (e.g., large explosions on the covers which don't serve to illustrate anything other than the reviewers' excitement).

      The UK edition is great. Why anyone with a choice would ever read the US edition I will never understand.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by iSeal ( 854481 )

        You must be reading the US edition, which is indeed crap. In terms of geography, I live about halfway between the UK and US, yet the US edition costs a bit more. It also has half the width and much more advertising-per-content, as well as overmuch "eye-candy" (e.g., large explosions on the covers which don't serve to illustrate anything other than the reviewers' excitement).

        The UK edition is great. Why anyone with a choice would ever read the US edition I will never understand.

        Oh I couldn't agree more.

        • It seemed like their covers was just "YET ANOTHER WW2 SHOOTER!"

          While I see where you're going with this I will say that for a lot of year between HL1 and HL2 WW2 shooters were the only FPS (IMHO, of course) that got consistantly better. I'd take the original MOH over BF2 at this point because it was that good. Graphically? no, but it seemed like better game play to me. Again, IMHO.

  • More regrettable signs of a a fading print industry.

    I'm not so sure I'm inclined to agree with that. While the print industry may be shrinking I think this has more to do with a less than stellar product and as the story indicates has much to do with poor business decisions.

    I read the Official Xbox Magazine from time to time and it's quality in comparison with other publications is severely lacking. Of course that's just my opinion.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by twistedsymphony ( 956982 )
      I'm a subscriber to the US version of OXM... I can attest to it being crap. To be perfectly honest the ONLY reason I subscribe is for the discs, and the rest of the magazine just collects dust. Basically the mags cost $10 on the newsstand and it's $17 for a year's subscription. They get the occasional disc exclusive that will prompt me to buy the mag and I figure as long as they get at least 2 of those a year It's cheaper to subscribe.

      Though they do things a little backwards, you buy it in the store and

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Khuffie ( 818093 )
        I agree. Magazines directed towards the UK market seem to just be plain better than US magazines. I'm surprised at the subscription issues you have with the official OXM in the states. When I was subscribed to Computer Arts magazine (which was kind of general, but more UK centric I guess), it was cheaper (by a bit) and you get benefits! For example, all magazine covers had no headlines on them if you subscribed, so you get the full beauty of the cover image without anything blocking it. And every once in a
        • What you described about other magainzes has been my experience as well. Other publications treat subscribers to a higher quality version of the publication, larger format, higher quality pages, cleaner front covers etc.

          Not so with OXM... When I got my first issue in after subscribing I felt like I was kicked in the nuts, sort of a "ha ha, we've already got your money so we're giving you the cheapest product possible". I even called them up to see if I could get the newsstand quality issues for a few ext
    • Seriously. After Sony announced their $500/$600 price tag for the PS3, I was still reading magazines talking about how the PS3 was going to be the greatest video system upgrade since the NES to the SNES. Sony Connect was going to rock Xbox Live, the Sixaxis was supposed to bridge the gap between the Xbox360 controller and the Wii-mote, and Resistance was supposed to negate the 1-year advantage Xbox360 had by blowing people out of the water with its graphics.

      Post-launch, in the hands of the customer, people

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by KliX ( 164895 )
      I agree with you - I'm quite happy to read about things I'm interested in, in any format and I'm quite happy to pay for a magazine, but, I stopped buying or being interested in most of the computer mags I used to read when I found that they were just chock full of net derived material and press releases.

      I don't need to pay extra for that - I can find it myself.

      Good writers (what happened to them in the mid 90s? Not getting paid I expect) and some insight, rather than plain fact reporting is enough to get me
  • Future also publishes PC Gamer magazine. It's the only print magazine of any type I actually subscribe to. I hope they don't decide to close it or any of the other mags down.

  • Not surprising. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Cambo67 ( 932815 )
    This decline in computer magazine publishing is not at all surprising. The magazines have such a long lead time that they are pretty much out of date once they hit the newsagent shelves or the subscribers' doormats.

    When Internet access in the UK was through metered 56K modem, reading the latest game news could be quite expensive. Downloading demos, patches, add-ons, drivers, etc, would also give your phone bill a nasty bump.

    Now that most PC gamers have broadband access, they can read the latest news imm
  • Review magazines are pointless when you can read reviews online, with hundreds of game-resolution screenshots, and then there are sites like metacritic and so on that collate reviews so you don't get one crap review. And it is instant.

    Also I don't want to read crap written for teenagers. I didn't want to when I was a teenager, but back then computing magazines were far more grown up.

    Future Publishing started off with Amstrad Action some 21 years ago. It will be a shame to see them die (inevitable within a f

  • Accounting Math (Score:5, Informative)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Friday December 01, 2006 @01:53PM (#17069766) Journal
    For those of you confused about how a company can make a profit while reporting losses, the losses came from other things like a charge on assets, not a loss based on poor sales.

    And this is using Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP), not Hollywood/Government style accounting.
  • Don't they write/publish Linux Format magazine? That mag is awesome. I hope this won't affect this part of their business.

  • Stevie (Score:2)

    by popo ( 107611 )

    Start working on that resume...
  • just curious what peoples thoughts are on paper vs. digital since it hasn't really been discussed in the comments yet.
    • I read magazines in the bathroom while my laptop is currently in pieces. I'm waiting on my 3rd replacement screen.

      That's the only excuse I can think of. You read magazines because either you don't have a laptop, you don't have Wifi, or you don't have to go to the bathroom. Any one of those three probably makes you a freak, though.
    • I have a few digital subscriptions that I got for free from offers that show up fairly regularly on deal sites. I don't have a strong preference for digital vs. paper; each has their strong points. Digital is nice because you receive the magazine before the print version is available, generally by about 1-2 weeks (this is based on Games for Windows magazine, which I get in both formats. Hey, it was free -- why not?). The resolution isn't as crisp as I would like, and obviously it lacks the portability o
    • I subscribe to the PC-centric gaming mags because I'm doing a dissertation on PC Gaming, so I'm keeping the magazines for possible research. However, I might be pretty rare in that regard.

      Another reason is that with subscriptions on ebay being so cheap, it isn't that big of a deal to subscribe to them. I think I got 3 years of PC Gamer for $9.99. That's basically 30 cents an issue. At that price, why not?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Metsys ( 718186 )

      just curious what peoples thoughts are on paper vs. digital since it hasn't really been discussed in the comments yet.

      During the course of my daily life, I don't have access to the internet all the time. It's not available while I'm walking. It's not available when I'm waiting for the doctor/client/etc. I also don't have a laptop (don't need one, not for my line of work), so even if it was available I won't have access to it until I sat down at a desktop computer.

      Magazines, pamphlets, and books don't requir

    • In some ways, I just prefer the format of dead-tree published content. I like browsing through the articles in a basically linear fashion, at least in magazines that happen to have a decent content-to-advertising/bullshit/inane-fanboyism ratio.

      I recently read somewhere about NYT expecting to release a newsreader for their paper which presents the content in basically the same way as dead-tree paper. If that was available for the gaming mags I like to read, I wouldn't bother with the waste of dead-tree mags.
  • Bring back Amstrad Action... ...Downhill from there.

    Computer Magazines are not dead, they still have a viable business, but they are just crap.

    The problem with most computer magazines:

    1. CD of crap Windows shareware. Even Linux magazines have CDs that I could just download.
    2. Old News, they should not bother with news as by the time it gets to the stand, I have read it all on Slashdot two weeks before.
    3. Not enough in-depth features. Most mags seem to be written for the causal buyer. There are only so many

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Knara ( 9377 )
      #2 and #3 are the reasons I don't read them anymore. "Breaking news" that is over a month old is pointless. For the video game print industry to survive, they have to start doing a lot more analysis and in-depth features, vs. trying to tell me about how great E3 was over a month later.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Khuffie ( 818093 )
      If you are at all interested in indepth features about stuff like Photoshop/Illustrator, etc, I would recommend Computer Arts magazine. It's pretty damned good.
  • I have to admit, I got bored of PC mags; I was reading news stories I'd read a month ago on Digg/Slashdot - even the BBC. The reviews I couldn't care less about unless I was actually buying something, and the technical articles either aren't relevant to me, or I'm just not interested. So all that was really left was the opinion pieces, and even then, I couldn't care.

    So now, I hardly ever buy PC mags. I do, on the other hand, still have a subscription to Guitarist magazine, and I know Future do four or five
  • > a large reported loss by Future Publishing, the...publisher
    > of...the U.S. Official Xbox Magazine. Their pre-tax losses
    > totaled $95.6 million, while profits were down $39.8 million to $26.7 million

    "Future Publishing officials admitted they probably shouldn't have followed Microsoft's business model for the Xbox when designing their Xbox magazine."
  • Someone spelled "loses" right!
  • I can't say I'm sorry to see these magazines go. These rags are nothing but cover-to-cover advertisements. They consist mostly of previews, some feature article with no substance whatsoever and excessively positive reviews. Either that or it's some guy trying to wax philosophical about something pointless.

    It's either that or the writers gloat about how they're in the industry and get their hands on everything before the average consumer does. They barely put any effort into print quality so that I can clear

  • I have had a subscription to one of their cross-stitch magazines for nearly 5 years now. They are quite strong in the crafts market. The have plenty of titles that are nothing to do with computers or gaming.

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