Future Publishing buys Imagine

[Rev]

3 minutes ago, Alex W. said:

But as was mentioned up the page, surely if Edge, Gamesmaster etc. gave Future the kind of content that could go in bookazines, Future would've done more of them?

 

I'm 100% sure they could make them, but if they've not got anywhere to sell them it doesn't help much. Imagine have basically a whole unit in almost every WHSmiths and they've got space in most supermarkets too. It's fairly incredible. They're not going to give that up unless Future promised the same range of titles and same sales figures and that'd be a massive undertaking and it's not realistic to give over more space to them.

[Alex W.]

My only mirrors are tiny so surely he would be pocket-sized.

[Rev]

Srsly, just look at the list:

 

https://www.imagine-publishing.co.uk/portfolio/bookazines

 

Even I didn't know it was that many and I've actually had to go and look at a chunk of them for my job. I'm pretty sure that all Future will do is put all their archives on a big ol' hard drive and deliver them to Imagine and say "make money plz" and they will.

[elmo]

2 hours ago, Lorfarius said:

RG is currently outselling GamesTM too. Interesting times!

 

Retro gamer like retro things. Makes sense.

[jon_cybernet]

Remember when Future couldn't work out a successful web strategy to go up against IGN and Eurogamer (Which ironically built much of its success by poaching talent from Edge's freelance pool), so they bought the then popular CVG site, and then proceeded to meddle with it and fuck off the talent who made it popular in the first place, until they smashed it into the ground and ultimately closed it a few years later?

 

Yeah, that. 

 

[angel]

You really hate Future jon.

I say bring back CVG as a mag, at its height (96-99 ish) it was awesome.

[Dig Dug]

As a former reader of Official Nintendo magazine and a former member of their forums I can say with confidence that Future can't be trusted and CVG will never come back after the failure that was the CVG network.

[jon_cybernet]

5 minutes ago, angel said:

You really hate Future jon.

I say bring back CVG as a mag, at its height (96-99 ish) it was awesome.

 

To be fair, I worked for them for 10 years as a staffer and a freelancer in both Bath and London, so I've got a pretty well-informed opinion. Don't get me wrong, most of the people working on the mags I like, it's more the upper management that are utterly fucking useless. 

[jon_cybernet]

9 minutes ago, angel said:

You really hate Future jon.

I say bring back CVG as a mag, at its height (96-99 ish) it was awesome.

 

I worked at Dennis then, and half the team working on CVG at that time was basically smashed off their faces on booze and drugs 24/7.

[Meh]

Oh fuck.

[retroed]

It's almost as if Future had already bought Imagine when I picked up the one on the left a couple of weeks ago.

 

[angel]

9 minutes ago, jon_cybernet said:

 

I worked at Dennis then, and half the team working on CVG at that time was basically smashed off their faces on booze and drugs 24/7.

 

Well the mag was great so fine by me. Keep up with stories old bean.

[Rev]

6 minutes ago, angel said:

 

Well the mag was great so fine by me. Keep up with stories old bean.

 

Not really related, but I assume you read the Sega Power Playboy article?

[strider]

Retro Gamer is Imagine's third most profitable brand/magazine. I've dedicated 11 years of my life to make it as good as it can possibly be and it's now making more money than ever. Retro Gamer will be fine.

[Jbone]

1 hour ago, Rev said:

 

Not really related, but I assume you read the Sega Power Playboy article?

Oh wow, thanks for the heads-up.

 

Amazing!

Quote

“I remember the Lion King game,” Wallace says. “Now, that was not a game that excited anyone. I mean, a Lion King game? So what? But it was an exclusive, and the PRs made a huge deal about it, so it was going to get the cover, as well as about eight pages inside. A big deal. Anyway…the review was written from the point of view of a man who’d been bitten by a mosquito and given the power of metaphor. I don’t think in eight pages the game was mentioned once. [There were] a lot of great metaphors though. And I’d rather read that than almost anything about a Lion King game.”

 

I had a mate who wasn't at all into gaming, but used to come over to my place just to read Sega Power.

[mushashi]

8 hours ago, tnman said:

I don't entirely understand this decision apart from wanting to blow up the opposition.

 

Shrinking industry, consolidation is the only way to extend the viability of it for a bit longer I suppose. Future already swallowed up some other publisher's gaming mags over the years. The entire value of the deal was peanuts. £14.2 Million for the entire company.

 

Quote

“The acquisition will enable us to scale significantly our market position in bookazines and will see us enter the knowledge vertical, broadening our reach. The addition of Imagine with its strong management team and quality staff enables us to take a further substantial step towards our strategy of creating content that connects, increasing scale and improving operational efficiency."

 

[Meh]

3 hours ago, strider said:

Retro Gamer is Imagine's third most profitable brand/magazine. I've dedicated 11 years of my life to make it as good as it can possibly be and it's now making more money than ever. Retro Gamer will be fine.

Wasn't CVG massively popular at the time some fuckheads at Future decided to change the entire magazine, adding that stupid fucking 'flap' gimmick, resulting in a quick departure for the talented, enthusiastic staff?

 

BE AFRAID - YOU'RE NEXXXXT.

[Dudley]

And that's what I'm actually afraid of here, that Future will get all "Editorial direction" on it and Strider will understandably eventually tableflip and walk out.

[robotattack]

25 minutes ago, Meh said:

Wasn't CVG massively popular at the time some fuckheads at Future decided to change the entire magazine, adding that stupid fucking 'flap' gimmick, resulting in a quick departure for the talented, enthusiastic staff?

 

BE AFRAID - YOU'RE NEXXXXT.

 

 

 

From memory, that was when Dennis bought the title from EMAP. I'm fairly certain the only print-based magazine Future published with the CVG brand on it was that "CVG presents GTA" one-off magazine. Before that they'd only used on for the website.

[Rev]

12 minutes ago, robotattack said:

 

From memory, that was when Dennis bought the title from EMAP. I'm fairly certain the only print-based magazine Future published with the CVG brand on it was that "CVG presents GTA" one-off magazine. Before that they'd only used on for the website.

 

No. It was good and then went bad (flap) whilst under EMAP and then sold to Dennis.

[robotattack]

Well, it still wasn't Future.  I thought the new look might have happened while it was still at EMAP, but wasnt entirely sure of the timeline. All I really remember was that it seemed to happen for no good reason and the content seemed to get significantly shit when it happened.

[WibbleWorldGiddy]

4 hours ago, Dudley said:

And that's what I'm actually afraid of here, that Future will get all "Editorial direction" on it and Strider will understandably eventually tableflip and walk out.

 

I can see it being relaunched as Amstrad Action in a few months.

 

But seriously, my worry is that Future will reduce Retro Gamer's page width to A4, cut it down to 100 pages and hike the price to £5.99 in a few months, like most of its other mags.

[Rev]

2 hours ago, robotattack said:

Well, it still wasn't Future.  I thought the new look might have happened while it was still at EMAP, but wasnt entirely sure of the timeline. All I really remember was that it seemed to happen for no good reason and the content seemed to get significantly shit when it happened.

 

It was probably relatively expensive to produce due to the yellow paper (which was more expensive than the rest of the paper) but they clearly just thought they could get a lot more people reading it than were. My theory is that because that was the era when official titles were selling loads someone high up thought the potential audience for a multi format mag was the total of three official mags combined, rather than the fraction who owned multiple consoles. They was wrong, possibly the wrongest any games magazine decision has ever been.

[Meh]

3 hours ago, robotattack said:

 

From memory, that was when Dennis bought the title from EMAP. I'm fairly certain the only print-based magazine Future published with the CVG brand on it was that "CVG presents GTA" one-off magazine. Before that they'd only used on for the website.

Ah, you're totally right. I'm getting dickhead magazine publishers mixed up.

[strider]

When I was the retro editor on gamestm I wanted to have the retro section on that different paper to make it feel like more of a standalone section. Amazingly the price was ridiculously high (they had already looked into it) so it never happened.

 

[Goose]

DId this happen because I didn't renew my subscription to Retro Gamer? 

 

I'm so sorry

[Bacon Horsemeat]

There is a LOT of crossover between the two. In fact, for each mag Future has, imagine has an equivalent 95% of the time. They also produce similar one off guides and "bookazines".

[WibbleWorldGiddy]

5 hours ago, robotattack said:

 

From memory, that was when Dennis bought the title from EMAP. I'm fairly certain the only print-based magazine Future published with the CVG brand on it was that "CVG presents GTA" one-off magazine. Before that they'd only used on for the website.

 

There were 4 or 5 CVG specials, weren't there? I can't remember the games that were covered, but the BBC announcement describes the specials as a bi-monthly series.

 

Edit: Just remembered that Imagine bought Crash and Zzap in 2014. I wonder if they were included in the deal.

[robotattack]

Hmm, apparently so. MGS, COD, FIFA and WOW specials come up in a quick image search. I only remember the GTA one.

[mushashi]

If you read the press release from Future, game magazines aren't even mentioned as a specific reason to buy Imagine, it's the other stuff they do that they highlight as beneficial reasons to merge the 2 companies. Cost reductions from deduplication of roles will be one thing they'll be looking into.