Why buy official magazines?

[Ady]

This is partly inspired from comments in the P.N.03 thread in regards to Official Nintendo Magazine's negative summation of the game. I was going to respond with some disparaging comments on the unreliability of said loo roll, but decided to save my comments for this thread.

So, official mags, then. They've pretty much existed for as long as games consoles have but who are they aimed at? Surely most people have enough common sense and enough savvy to know that anything coming from an publication officially endorsed a given manufacturer is bound to be a little biased?

ONM is one thing, but any adults buying official X-Box or PS2 mags should be ashamed of themselves as they obviously don't mind being patronised.

I really don't think official magazines should exist. People who care about their money and good games should not trust them. For the most part, officials exist to deceive the reader by telling them of the splendour of the naked emperor's clobber. (This makes the bad P.N.03 review seem even more galling; as this damn fine game will now get overlooked in favour of some third rate multiformat licensed crap).

Either way, does anyone see where I'm coming from? Who would trust an official? Does anyone here buys officials or know of anyone who does? If so, then why?

I'm just intersted, that's all.

[Madbury]

I thought the official DC mag was pretty good for a while, even picked up a couple of issues, crossed over to the unofficial DC mag eventually, which had a useful digest of reviewed games at the back.

Still ODCM was pitched at the right audience for the time. Sort of an FHM of gaming mags if you will. They even had an editorial in issue 1 explaining why they were official, but impartial as well (yeah right).

[Gruce]

I buy OXM due to many factors, the main one being the demo's.

[Rabasaurus]

Your assuming that everyone who buys games has a big interest in games, is intellegent enough to realise that official mags can have a favorable slant in their journalism and generally give a dam about them. They dont.

They are 'Official' therefore must be the best.

Oh look at the lovely demo disk.

Your average gamers outlook on mags.

[PeteJ]

Official magazines are always the most popular of whatever format, if said magazine scores harshly game sales go down, if game sales drop hardware sales drop - leading to less magazine sales.

I don't think I could ever trust an official mag, but I would buy one. Sometimes I turn into an information junky, and there are few better places to get info than the 'official' source. I'd also buy one for a demo.

Of course, I've not actually bought an official magazine since the PS1 days (or anything other than Edge\gamesTM). I guess this comes down to demos as well - I already own or have played the full version of the exclusive demos they slap on the cover. Importing - yay.

[tankplanker]

I have only ever brought an official mag if it has a demo off a game that I'm not sure off.

I think alot of people buy the official mag as some sort of "quality seal" - as they are official they must know what they are talking about

And people seem fairly happy with their reviews as the same 3rd party licence crap makes up the pal top 20 and they have some of the highest distro figures for the single format mags*

*I've checked OXM & OP2M but not ONM

[Ady]

A friend of mine, a devout Nintendo fanatic buys ONM.

Thing is, he's an intelligent adult and I really cannot understand what he could possibly derive from the mag. It also appears that a lot of his opinions (initially, at least) come from that magazine. When I glance at that mag, all I see is puerile content that would've insulted my intellignece when I was twelve.

Personally, I've always gone for unofficials or multiformats. Demo discs present little lure for me these days, too but I suppose the human lust for free stuff cannot be underestimated.

As for "It's official, so it must be the best", that's up there with people who say "X group got to no.1 with Y song, so they must be good". Urgh!

[overlord uk]

Ahh, I remember the "Greystation" and "Dreampants" comments from ONM, wonderful

I've only ever bought two issues of OXM, and only for the demos. One was the special christmas edition, which had 16 demos on it. They actually said 18 on the box, but two of them were mysteriously absent, one of which was Gun Valkyrie which I really want to try before I buy it.

The mag itself is awful.

[Captain Falcon]

DEMOS Thats why everyone buys them. Sometimes the disc has a good demo, mostly though they are crap and put you off buying the game, which is a strange thing for companies to do.

The offical DC mag was the best. I miss those days so much .

[Kirby]

I did buy the official Xbox mag for the demos, but then even they started going downhill so now i dont buy any official mags. I've never bought an official GC mag. In fact i only really buy Edge or GamesTM, and that's only if they have a feature or review inside that i'm particularly interested in.

I did buy PC mags all the time for demos, but since i got ADSL there's no point. I can save ?6 and download only the demos i specifically want for free.

[mid]

I've been known to get the official PS2 or XBox mag for the demo.

Lets be honest, with the possible (and only vaguely possible) exceptions of Edge and Gamestm, you're not going to be getting your opinions on games from print mags when there are a wealth of fora out there where real, independant individuals can all voice their 'forked out actual cash' ones, and there are a decent variety of ones to hear. You're certainly not going to get intelligent longform articles from most mags, official or otherwise, and even if you do, there is less scope for bias being annoying there.

So its about which one has the demo on, the one place where you can actually try the game out and see what you think.

[Max M]

Still ODCM was pitched at the right audience for the time. Sort of an FHM of gaming mags if you will.

I thought it was embarrasing at times. They're "Drinking and thinking" feature in paticular... totally setup, and trying way too hard to be cool. I liked "Dreamcast Magazine" more.

[wod]

i've only really bought them for the demo disc on them, but if there something of interest to me in the magazine then i'll buy it.

[dataDave]

I never collected it but I've looked through friends copies of the Official Saturn Mag and that looked alright - They always used to feature arcade versions of 2D fighters and interviews with their creators.

I bought a couple of them however just to see what I'd missed on the console, just shortly after swapping my PSX for a Saturn around about Octoberish '96, just in time for Nights and Xmas Nights goodness! I still have them mags somewhere - must dig them out!

I remember back in '91/'92 (when I was 10/11) when I went through a mad surge of buying every single mag that had anything about Street Fighter 2 in it. Most of those mags absolutely stank.

TOTAL was another bad 'self-hyped' mag from Future IIRC - I remember when they gave SM All-Stars 99%. It wasn't that good. They were Nintendo fanboys, and I think I'm bad!!

[Stuart Smith]

I used to get all the Official Mags, primarily for the cover disc content. I do maintain, however, that Official Dreamcast was constantly well-written up until the end, and that Official PS2 started off comparatively well, but has simply dive-bombed in quality over the last six months.

Since switching to importing however, and broadly losing the benefit of demo discs, I've largely given up on single format games mags altogether. I get PC Zone because I think that is really a rather good read, and OPS2 still for the demos (and cos I'm currently subscribed), but GamesTM and EDGE more than cover my Xbox/GC/GBA/etc needs, and are a damn sight better written to boot!