Ziff Davis Media announced Wednesday that it was ending print publication of its 27-year-old flagship, PC Magazine, and would take the title online only.
PC Magazine’s circulation was 1.2 million in the late 1990s. It is the latest of several magazine publishers to drop a print edition, as advertising plummets and the cost of printing a paper version rises.
“The viability for us to continue to publish in print just isn’t there anymore,” Jason Young, chief executive of Ziff Davis, said in an interview.
To quote: Seven production, circulation and advertising employees will be cut as a result of the move, out of a total of about 140 who work on PC Magazine and PCMag.com. Mr. Young said the company was considering taking its other print magazine, the video-game publication Electronic Gaming Monthly, into an online-only format, but would not make a decision before the end of the year.
Remember when the PS3 came out? It was comfortably the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market. That was a huge selling point for the console, trust us. When the PS2 first launched we conducted a survey that showed that over 30% of the early adopters bought it primarily for its DVD playback.
We haven’t seen figures for the PS3 in relation to how many consumers picked it up as a Blu-ray player, but the release strategies and state of the market are comparative and a similar percentage would’ve been expected. (we’ve contacted Sony for this statistic and will update you when/if we get a response)
In fact at the time of the PS3’s launch, the Blu-ray diode that powered the ROM was the costly and relatively difficult to produce component which stalled the release of the system in territories like Australia, and where Sony was losing much of its money on each console sold.
Earlier this week we reported that the Xbox 360 had received another pric... More »
The latest research from Frank N. Magid Associates takes a look at how receptive gamers are to in-game ads. It seems that price drops or free games makes advertising very worthwhile for most.
Advertising in console games (as well as PC and other games) has become increasingly common in the industry today. Even presidential candidates are advertising in games these days.
We wondered, though, how consumers would feel if this trend grew and significantly more advertising was placed in console games but the price of the game was also cut in half or, was even free.
As it turns out, most gamers were quite receptive to this idea. Very few were negative about having major price reductions or even free games in return for considerable amounts of advertising in the games.
In fact, less than 20 percent of gamers said they were less likely to purchase a game, at half the price, but with more advertising. The plurality, 31 percent, said i... More »
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe today announced a new initiative called Shoot!.
Shoot! will deliver series of short films that will be free to download from 13th November via PlayStation®Network for PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) or PSP™ (PlayStation®Portable), allowing owners to watch cutting-edge film from up-and-coming directors and experience this unique content.
The films will also be screened across Europe on ShortsTV from January 2009.
Press Release: Six of Hollywood’s award winning filmmakers Armendariz, Bruckheimer, Kounen, Rothermund, Vinterberg, Winterbottom have chosen an emerging film director from their own country to mentor for the project. The emerging directors then created a short film, shot in High Definition, based on an open brief, shaped only by one of a number of words that capture the essence of PlayStation: Play, Create, Share, Connect, Discover and Challenge.
The emerging directors will showcase their mo... More »
Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg has revealed that the launch of the new Xbox Experience will see Microsoft spend more money in marketing in advertising this holiday than they have ever done so in the history of the Xbox.
Greenberg also went on to claim that Microsoft has the biggest and broadest game lineup, which rounds out the appeal of the Xbox 360.
To quote: But the "re-launch" of the entire Xbox 360 experience will also be accompanied with in-store outreach, says Greenberg.
"We will be launching the largest marketing campaign in the history of Xbox," he says. "We will be spending more money in marketing in advertising this holiday than we ever have in the history of our business."
Finally, what Greenberg claims is the industry's "biggest and broadest" games lineup rounds out the appeal, he says. "We have had some broad-appeal games in the past, but we have never had a year where we had... Think about the music genre and all... More »
The multimillion-dollar ad war between Microsoft and Apple has turned nasty, with Apple firing the latest salvo in an attempt to continue to define Vista as a broken, bug-ridden operating system.
Apple's ads have long lampooned the PC for being staid and uncool but, this time, Apple's target isn't the PC per se, but Microsoft's marketing strategy.
The first of two new ads shows PC, played by John Hodgman, allocating stacks of dollar bills toward either "advertising" or "fix Vista", with the bulk of the money going to advertising.
The ad is a swipe at Microsoft's $US300 million ($430 million) ad campaign to redefine Windows Vista's image, which featured stars including comedian Jerry Seinfeld (reportedly paid $US10 million for his appearance), actress Eva Longoria, singer Pharrell Williams and even the author Deepak Chopra.
A belated response to Apple's highly successful "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC... More »
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