Gaming takes over as Future cuts staff!

[Joelcool7]

Alright everyone who is anyone in gaming knows of Future. Future Publishing was huge in Europe before it came to North America as well. Future publishing is well known for Official X-Box  Magazine, Nintendo Power and Official PlayStation  Magazine. I mean they have the official liscense for all three game companies. Not only that but globally they publish official magazines for all three companies else where around the globe.

This magazine publisher is the biggest gaming magazine publisher around and guess what it shows in their lay offs. Apparently Future recently ran into trouble with its technology division which is responsable for Windows:The Official Magazine and Maximum PC was down in profits. So the division realized its gaming division however was staying even not loosing much money.

So naturally Future decided to merge its gaming and technology divisions. But instead of canning game staff they made the cuts to their technology division. According to Gamasutra laying off five key employees. Just to look at the sales figures for Future Publishing USA.

"According to Future's latest financial results, its technology groups revenues were down in the first half of the year, from $8.3 million to $7 million. The gaming group's revenues were flat at $15.8 million." - Gamasutra

So who knows what this merger means for the technology magazines, will some of them be getting axed? Also what about the gaming magazines will they suffer due to staff having to also run the tech magazines?

Also is the poorer tech magazine sales really a managment issue or is it the fact that less and less techies want to buy magazines while gamers are still interested? Will putting the game division in charge of the tech division really help save the dying tech magazines, or will gaming continue to stay even and tech continue to fall?

Again gaming kicks tech's butt, sort of ironic since video games are tech themselves. Oh well its cool to see that while Windows:The Official Magazine is going down that OXM (Official X-Box Magazine) is doing great. I guess its also a blow to PC owners seeing their magazines go down shamefully while console magazines sell well!