Another Mag bites the dust
 

Gamespot.com is reporting that Next Generation Magazine is folding. The January issue will be the final one. Hmmm, just amazing timing that Tom Russo decides to leave the magazine with the December issue. No word yet on what magazine(if any) the subscribers of NexGen with end up with.


Mike

Raise your hand if you're surprised. Nobody? I thought so.

NextGen has been on a downward slide for the last couple years. Many articles felt like either trip to the thesaurus or written the night before without even trying to sound like it wasn't written the night before.

However, I'm not necessarily happy about NextGen's demise, because it's one more vid rag gone from the shelves. After the death of GF, Incite, GR, and now NextGen--the number of options for a reader has plummeted. Which sucks, because none of the mags that have survived are particularly good (except Game Informer--always a fun read). With such a shoddy track record, the chances of getting somebody to invest in starting a great mag now are slimmer than an MC Hammer comeback.

Consider that net sites are folding left and right, the amount of good daily content is way down, too. What's left? IGN and Videogames.com for us Yanks? Thanks, but no thanks.

So, where do we go from here? The route of official mags, like OPM, OXM, and Nintendo Power? Where opinions don't always outweigh corporate interests? Objectivity has become a shaky thing anyway with vid game rags (again, except for GI). I fear for a day when all gaming rags say everything's superduper cool to secure advertising revenue or to please their "official" sponsor's marketing department. (I wrote for Nintendo Power, so trust me--I know how this goes...)

Is it me, or was I the only person to know that Next-Gen never, ever made a profit? http://www.ve3d.com:81/smile.gif

Nope, I didn't think so...

I used to like Next-Gen and I'm sorry to hear that it too has now ended it's run.
Personally though, I think the US OPM is a pretty good magazine.

Having worked in print for a while now it's been interesting to note that most US mags hae very shot game reviews and just a gazillion preview screenshots whereas European magazines tend to have multiple page long reviews with lots of text.

The basic problem behind many US and UK magazines which have folded is that they simply seem to have way too much staff.
Different reviewers for each genre..come one, that's just a waste of money..it would be nice in an ideal world but having 12+ staff on a 100 page magazine is just way too much and expensive.

I didn't know you used to write for Nintendo Power Levi. I used the love that magazine. Then I realized how horrid it was (you hit that age where you realize the age group it's written for). Talk about bias...I haven't read NP in quite some time.

Yeah, Next Gen has been on the decline for quite a while - when the mag was first launched, it was pretty darn good...lots of interesting features and interviews about games and the industry. But over time, as the staff turned over, the writing became increasingly dry and the articles were pat and uninteresting. The giant blown-up screen shots in the templated page layouts didn't help matters any.

I like Game Informer even though I'm not a fan of their EIC, I also kinda like the style of the official PS2 and XBox mags. I've always liked PC Gamer, too.

There are still some mags worth buying out there (and a lot that aren't)...at this point I think it's sort of the "Survival of the fittest" in the enthusiast press.

------------------
Kevin, the erstwhile "Hi-Fi"
www.videowrestling.com

Next Gen also used to (i don't know if they still do) use a really nice quality paper for the mag, but they charged the same price as the competitors. I'm sure that couldn't help.

I liked the pictures in Next Gen (mostly in the alphas section), but the writing has gone severely downhill. I thought the layout in the mag was alright too.

Why not try EDGE (Next Gen´s sister-mag)? It has always been better than Next Gen and seems to keep the style when everybody else gets worse and worse.
In my opinion - GameFan was the last truly great VG-mag coming out of the US (that I have read I might add) and since then the publishers in UK has been more than willing to part me of my cash.