out-of-print archive • The Videogame Magazine Crash of 1994

The Videogame Magazine Crash of 1994

Chances are that the majority of people wouldn’t have even noticed that there was a videogame magazine crash in 1994. That’s not surprising as it easily passed us by and only came to light once we looked at some of the facts and figures from that period. To fully understand the enormity of the ‘crash’ we need to go back in time to 1993 when the 16-bit consoles and computers were at the height of their commercial power and the old 8-bit range of machines were still clinging on. 1993 must surely go down as one of the busiest and most successful years in videogame magazine history.

As 1992 turned into 1993, GamesMaster, a multi-format title based oh the videogames television show of the same name, broke all records. The launch proved to be a massive success and circulation figures broke the 100,000 barrier with ease. The other established titles on the market were also seeing high circulation figures throughout. Publishers were happy. Gamers were happy. Everyone was happy.

In the flourishing Sega scene, Mega Action, Mega Power, Mega Machines and even a dedicated tips magazine in the form of Sega SX appeared. Sega Force had also split into two separate entities with Sega Force Mega and Sega Master Force. In Nintendo land, N Force changed into SNES Force and, similarly, Control changed into Super Control. PC gamers were also spoilt for choice with new magazines being launched in the shape of PC Zone, PC Gamer, PC Player and PC Action. Edge, which still survives to this day, launched in late 1993, too.

However, as 1993 turned into 1994, a number of things occurred that contributed to one of the worst years in videogame magazine history. EMAP had acquired the rights to produce an official licensed Sega Magazine. Obviously very enthusiastic about the impending January 1994 launch, EMAP submitted a publisher’s statement of 150,000 for their circulation figure in the Willings Guide of 1994. With Sega Magazine launching into an already saturated Sega magazine market, the first ABC figure was a rather more modest 55,000 figure.

Impact Magazines were the first company to feel the squeeze in 1994 with both Sega Master Force and Sega Mega Force closing up with their January 1994 issues. However, that wasn’t the end of Impact Magazines’s woes as just a few short months later all three directors resigned, leaving the publishing outfit effectively leaderless. Presumably believing that the magazines were not worthy of saving, Europress Interactive (the parent company) closed down Impact Magazines, bringing an abrupt end to four magazines: Amiga Force, Commodore Force, Mega Machines and SNES Force. Europress Interactive also closed down their own Mega Action and Super Action publications, as did Maverick Magazines with Super Control.

Feeling the effects of the console magazine oversaturation, companies began offloading a lot of magazines during the year, even titles that had a fairly adequate readership. Effectively, after enjoying a hugely successful year in 1993, mass panic seemed to have now set in the minds of the money men. Having just bought Game Zone and Sega Zone the previous year, Future Publishing quickly closed Game Zone down and offloaded the Sega publication to Maverick Magazines where it slowly died off later in the year. Similarly, EMAP offloaded MegaTech to Maverick Magazines, presumably to give more breathing room to their other Sega titles, Sega Magazine and Mean Machines Sega. Then there was the sad outcome of this author’s favourite publication: Mega. Likely reacting to the first half ABC figures of 1994 where Mega dropped around 10,000 readers to arrive at 45,214, Future Publishing quickly sold the magazine to, yup, Maverick Magazines in July. And that was just after a total redesign of the title.

The high flying dependable titles were not exempt from all the turmoil either. EMAP’s flagship multi-format magazine C&VG dropped 53,000 readers from the previous year to settle around the 52,000 mark. Sister title Mean Machines Sega fared no better as it lost 49,500 readers to settle at 68,454. GamesMaster’s successful launch was but merely a distant memory as its readers plummeted to 63,527 (a drop of 59,681). Other Sega magazines that took huge drops in circulation were Sega Power (from 102,068 to 54,321) and Sega Pro (from 64,003 to 30,064).

	1993	1994	Difference
Magazines at end of year	48	39	-9
New launches during year	15	10	-5
Closures during year	7	17	+10
Average ABC figure of all publications	63,973	46,276	-17,697

There is also the fact that all this occurred at the twilight of the Mega Drive’s commercial life, which didn’t help matters. Plus, the Atari ST, Amstrad CPC and C64 were all coming to the end of their own commercial life as well.

However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom as a handful of magazines did launch in 1994, including Games World, Ultimate Future Games, Amiga CD32 Gamer, Amiga Pro and Super Gamer (which replaced the outgoing Super Pro). Also, the Amiga magazines seemed to be holding their own and didn’t see such a drastic decrease in readership as their console magazine counterparts.

The impending 32-bit generation would re-ignite the gamer’s interest in videogame magazines once more, especially with the massively successful PlayStation launch. And if you study the circulation figures throughout the years, you will notice the trends as one generation ends and another begins, although, there never was, or has been since, such a dramatic chain of events that happened during 1994.

Notes:

Special thanks to Mort at The Def Guide to Zzap!64and Andynick at Magazines From the Pastfor the cover scans.
Also special thanks to Homgran and Marc J for their contributions with circulation figures.

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