Topic: Magazines these days

I don't know if there is a topic about this. but I start this because here in holland, the only nintendo magazine in hollland closes. and as far as I know is this the third official magazine about nintendo worldwide that closes. after nintendo power and nintendo gamer in the UK, [N]Gamer closes.
and as the topic title says: Magazines these days, are they useless because of internet or do you still want these?

I still like them for nostalgic value and collection. I do miss Nintendo Power (and it looks kind of bad, Nintendo not having an official magazine now). However, the availability of up-to-the-minute game news has made game magazines (and magazines in general) kind of obsolete.

Magazines in general are not as demanded as they used to be due to the internet. However, it doesn't mean that they are necessarily obsolete. For instance, this thread here still shows support for the newest Nintendo magazine. In my opinion, there is just something special and nostalgic about them that the Internet cannot replace.

I think for the biggest part, people like them for collecting right?

I love reading my gameinformer in paper. I would hate if they went completely digital.

And how about that airline food?

I wonder if NP (and the two other Nintendo mags) fell due to lower interest in magazines in general, or a lower interest in Nintendo?

Why I ask, is that I haven't heard of any Multiplat, Xbox or Playstation magazines going out of print, while 3 Nintendo ones have. If it were just that magazines were obsolete, you'd think some other gaming mags would fall as well.

The loss of NP is sad though. I'm still slowly going through the final issue, because I don't want it to end, lol.

Magazines can still carve out a niche, they just need to change the format. Some have, and continue to do fairly well despite online competition. Fact is, magazines just cannot compete with the internet when it comes to timliness of news: even the best timed release of a magazine cannot match real-time Twitter updates. So I think magazines are instead moving towards higher quality articles and better writing standards - with the "WE WANT IT NOW!" deadlines of current event articles online, there's not enough time to research, interview etc the subject further before 'going to press' - so we often see articles consisting of a quick paragraph and a screencap of a tweet, or a pasted-in press release. Magazines, with their monthly release schedule, can dedicate a bit of time to making it a story, chasing sources and generally squeezing more juice out of it.
The written quality in general is better in magazines too - websites often written for voluntarily by amateur writers and journos, mags written by professionals. That's hardly clear cut, of course. There's plenty of great writers online, and plenty of terrible writers getting their names in physical print.
So physical magazines aren't dead or dying. There's a change going on, and that'll certainly result in casualties, but they're not going anywhere.

For me when it comes to magazines the old saying "Why pay for something when you can get it for free" comes to mind. As someone who is on a somewhat limited budget whatever a magazine offers I can find on the internet without having to pay a subscription fee. Also by the time you get the magazine usually the material is already old news thanks to the internet.

I have never liked Magazines dedicated to one brand, they always came off as hugely biased to me. I used to enjoy Games Master as a kid, but I've been buying Edge since the mid 90s, and Games TM for the last decade, and just recently moved them both to digital subscriptions on the ipad.

I've yet to find a website that offers the same quality writing, especially in the case of Edge. Not only are the previews and reviews incredibly well written, but there's a huge amount of editorial content on a wide range of game-related topics that you just don't see from online websites, since they're more about driving up their hits instead of provoking thought.

If a magazine is struggling because of the internet, it suggests they were far too reliant on their new section and other areas were lacking.

I miss Nintendo Power, but it wasn't changing enough to capture their audiences' attention. Since the internets came along and provided screenshots and an easier way to recieve news, Nintendo Power should have focused more on interviews, having a special unannounced bit of information whenever possible, and other things you just cannot do over the internet.
Nintendo Force is doing the same thing, but with comics (which are all over the web) , general stories on well known upcoming games, and basic reviews. But they really shine in their delivery style and writing. So their whole survival is based on how many people actually read a copy.