The latest ABC magazine circulation figures were released today. The Xbox mags are doing okay. Official Xbox 360 is up to 65,673 from 56,000, while Xbox 360 World stands at 30,296, a 31 percent boost in year-on-year figures. Those are both from Future, while Imagine Publishing's 360 crept up from 11,369 to 12,017 and X360 risen from the 28,000 mark to 30,179 issues. Uncooked Media's 360 Gamer is at 12,586.
"Future's PlayStation portfolio is looking grim in contrast," writes Gamesindustry.biz. "with all titles recording a drop in circulation. Official PlayStation 2 figures are now below 44,200, compared to 76,300 for the period ended in December. Unofficial titles PlayStation World (17,132) PSM3 (24,121) and cheat magazine Powerstation (15,171) are all down."
As for PC mags, they're all down - PC Gamer is at 41,600, PC Zone at 24,400 and PC Format at 28,300. Multi-format mags have slumped too since the establishment of the next-gen consoles: Edge is down to 30,021 and Games Master is on 47,719. GamesTM has not posted ABCs for this period.
Finally, Official Nintendo Magazine is doing 47,925 (a 35% year-on-year rise according to Future). There are no figures from the independent titles.
Pretty downbeat really, but also predictable. PS2 is slowly fading into its good night, while the Official Xbox and Nintendo magazine are doing decent business - although nowhere near the halycon days of Official PlayStation Magazine in its glory days (in the 200,000s). It'll be interesting to see how the new all-inclusive Official PlayStation Magazine fares when it posts its first figures - I hope my successive Haze and Assassin's Creed cover features haven't done too much damage.
One last thing, Future has posted ABC figures for its online duo: "Social gaming website GamesRadar attracts 3.25 million unique users a month, whilst its companion-site for hardcore gamers, CVG has some 1.56 million unique users each month." I don't think that Eurogamer or Pocket Gamer are officially audited in this way - would be interesting to compare the big UK games sites.
So, are you still buying games magazines? And where do you tend to go for your online news fix? Apart from here of course.
