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"Magazine Health Warning"

Reading Games magazines should come with a health warning. Every time I pick one up and read it I see a new game I want to get, but I still keep on buying the things.

I mainly buy magazines for the news and to aid me in my buying decisions, having a playable cover disc helps too, but in the end I just end up going to the list of games at the back and crossing through any I already have, then circling the ones I want. You can rest assured that there are a fair amount of games circled too, though they’re titles I may not ever end up getting.

The other problem is that I’m a multi-format kind of guy, I like to have more than one console if I can get away with it (although space, it has to be said, has become somewhat limited) The multi-format games magazines aren’t exactly the best in the world though, so I just end up coming home with more than one magazine and a big hole in my pocket instead.

Now, if I actually thought about this logically, I could just save my money and read these forums instead. There’s enough talk about games and many differing opinions here as well, I could get all the information I needed on what games to get next, but I’d be missing the all important cover disc. Well, looking at my pile of games, I also notice that there are an equally large pile of redundant cover discs lying next to them. After a couple of goes on the demos you know whether you really want to buy a game or not and you are not really going to bother playing the disc again, so there’s another waste, this time of money and space.

If only I listen to my brain when I enter shops instead of looking at the rows of glossy covers, I may have more games now than I actually do. This is getting more and more important with the Gamecube coming soon and all the shiny new GameCube magazines coming out. Is it worth getting them? I’ll just end up putting circles around almost everything on the list! Not only that, but every time I buy a magazine I’m taking money from the small amount that would have gone towards buying the actual games I’m reading about in the first place. This weird form of logic goes right out of the window when I walk past the heaving shelves of Playstation, PS2, GBA, Gamecube, Xbox and multi-format magazines, all crying out to be read.

If I had more time I could stand in the newsagents all day, reading, but I’m sure the management would have a few choice words to say about that. For now I will content myself with the knowledge that one day all those cover discs might actually be worth something and Hugh Scully might just be interested in PSX Disc #43 as a work of art….

What could be done is that developers could SELL slightly longer demos of their games for £4 an then go on and say if any1 wants to buy their game they'll get theri money back for the price of the Demo and therefore get £4 off as long as the demo is brought back and given in.....
if only that would work.....

I'm all in favour of cover disks. It's well worth paying an extra £1-2 to get such a good idea of whether or not those three of four games are worth playing. You get a much better idea of a game from playing a demo than you ever can from reading a review.

In factm I'd go as far as to say it would be worth just buying demo disks in stores. Why hasn't this happened yet?

No profit margins, I guess.

Still, it would be nice to walk into a store, pay £5 and walk away with half a dozen or more demos of upcoming games.

Cover discs can be your friends. They let you play games that you might not want to buy after playing them. By the time you find out, otherwise, it would be too late.

The problem is that they boost the cost of the magazine and often become redundant after a while.

I will never judge a magazind by its cover disc... Covr disc or no cover disc a mag is always judged 'by me' according to content...

My favourite as i said before is Edge, OK i only own a Dreamcast but what the hell its pretty interesting to read about other consoles as well as mine...

Edge HARDLY gives away freebies, i was lucky, i got hold of a calendar with the current issue, that probably all the freebies and demos you're gonna get for a year but i still buy it...

Flashy pictures and cheap paper do not constitiute a good mag as NOM uses (i actually obught one about a year ago).....

I find magazines like that (pokemon oriented, more pictures than content and biased) aimed at young children...

speaking of cover discs, nom better start giving them away when GC comes out or i'll stop buying it, personally I think Nom is now starting to get and and i really can't be bothered to buy it, thats mainly why i've got it o free subscription at the mo and quite frank;y there are better unbiased magazines around now anyway ala cube and ngc which will be the only 2 magazines which I will be buying if NOM does'nt buck up it's ideas!
slik ~_~

I used to buy a lot of magazine's, but I don't seem to bother anymore, seeing as I can find out anything I want on the net.

The thing is though, I don't.

If I buy a magazine, I'll read all of it, but when I'm on the net I just don't seem that interested in looking for news and reviews. If I didn't have the hassle of living half the year in one place and half in another, I'd subscribe to something, but as it is, I just leave it.

If you don't buy mags, a lot of news passes you by. You tend only to read what you were already interested in - which in my opinion, is not a good thing.

I don't buy any magazines at the mo, but I might when Gamecube cover discs start appearing.

On a non-gaming related subject, I picked up Empire magazine to read it's 50 must see films of 2002 article, and realised you can get free tickets using that magazine. That rules. I'll be flicking through every month to see if they have a decent freebie screening, and buying it to get free tickets! makes £3 worth spending.

Magazines are there to tell you which games are worth buying and which are complete rubbish but having a warning in case you are influenced into buying one of em is like having in the shop window "caution, once inside you may make a purchase"

I only need to concentrate on the PS2 mags because i can't aford more than one console, I always feel the mags are better there more colourful and have pictures and pages that you can turn i like the mags alot better. If i do see games i won't there nothing much i can do about it, i have no money i need a part time job all i have is a paper round which i don't get anough money from.

Fair point there pb; i always get my parents having a go at me whenever i want a mag, they seem to think that it's taking all my time up reading 'those magasines'
Then would it be an idea to do the best thing pb and get a subscrition to ONE magazine that you like (I prefer Edge)..
This will seem like a bit expensive but you'll save yourself money in the long run...