I'm not really that upset at the passing of the gaming rag, although I am upset at the possible loss of my money, since I had a 2 year sub, and will have to now fight to try and get some cash back.  In general, I'm trying to figure out what does it mean for the gaming industry.  Personally, I'm addicted to the gaming websites (VGChartz, Eurogamer, others...while not N4G which is like the foxnews of sites), and it's basically where I get nearly all of my realtime news from, so it's no real loss of info streams, so it might actually mean nothing, in the long run...other than less metacritic scores maybe.  Anyway, this video from IGN is funny as heck:

http://insider.ign.com/articles/863/863922p1.html

not really a big problem, theres a lot of other places where you can go

Its sad to me, because I bought it like crazy during the 16 bit era, got a stack of em with reviews of things like Conta 3 and Altered beast. Even the issues about the sony/nintendo cd system.

Just a piece of history gone, seems like no game magazine or anything can be like the sports illustrated of gaming.

there should be tho, like a standard from day one till now.

Last year I had a trial subscription. I am an avid reader, and at lunch you can usually find me with my face buried in a book or magazine. That said the magazine last year had inklings of hope that were as quickly crushed by a return to mediocrity. So when it came time for a renewal I could not oblige.

The problem isn't that print media cannot match digital media for timeliness. The real problem occurs when paper media continues to cover the same ground as the digital media. Paper media should have richer context. The writer has more time to write something compelling, and to give a better explanation. Further more for cost any written work should provide solid value for time spent.

Electronic Gaming Monthly was doing neither. I could get my full value from the magazine in less then an hours reading. That is just plain bad value. A good magazine is worth three or even four hours. The articles were nothing more then what could be produced by a blogger in thirty minutes. Once again the workmanship was shoddy. Finally filler, and stupidity abounded. Did I need four pages dedicated to the dumbest gaming guns, and whether they would actually work in real life. Done with less then two hundred words no less.

I honestly cannot consider this a loss. The times changed, and the magazine did not change. It wanted to still be the timely authority. When it should have moved to a deeper view, and been increasing its content. In fact I could swear that the magazine has only gotten lighter with time, and the writing if anything got worse.

I want to ask others is there any real reason for gaming mags to be jammed with pics from the games in question. Trailers are readily available now, as are demos, television shows, and on demand services. They seem to be utterly vestigial. More often then not eating up valuable page real estate that would be better used on writing.

Expect to see it happen more and more often w/ print magazines.

It's just the way of the world. A lot of magazines are going to go under to concentrate full time on a website. The last man standing will be Game Informer.

I agree with what you've stated.  I was struck by how lacking I found the covereage of EGM, when I first subcribed.  It's sad to see yet another gaming icon die, but ultimately, we are in a current environment of evolution or extinction.

That really sucks you had a subscription, but gaming magazines are so obsolete it isn't funny... there's no news in them that people who read this web site and others haven't known about for months.

I have doubts about that. The last two issues of GI have been 88 and 96 pages respectively. More troubling is that each had only 13 pages of ads (including covers). That's not enough to fund a magazine. 

Then you add in an editorial staff/policy that is ambivalent (at best) to antagonistic (at worst) to the Wii (even though its own survey showed there were more Wii owners reading the magazine than PS3 owners). Combine that with a tendency to hype games long before they are released (the games featured on the Dec. 2007 and Jan. 2008 covers were dropped by Activision -- Ghostbusters and Brutal Legend; the reported rumored new GTA retail game for 2009 has been denied by Rock Star).

The result is a magazine that is not writing for its readers but for itself. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, unless you are trying to sell it.

Back to the OP -- it is terrible to see anything with a rich history end. But as been noted elsewhere, too many print outlets are still writing like they did in "historical" times. When you were the only source of info, six week old stuff was great. Now, it is just six weeks out of date -- and often modified or debunked.

Mike from Morgantown

I was speaking more along the lines of Gamestop keeping it alive since it's a centerpiece in selling their cards program. Gamestop makes enough money to fund this magazine if ad pages decrease I believe.