Strategy Guide Publisher Prima Games Is Shutting Down After 28 Years

this is so sad

Damn you digital age. Damn you to YouTube!

Couldn't they create an online successor?

I'm kind of surprised they lasted this long to be honest. Hope anyone who's going to be unemployed finds a new job quickly.

Very sad news, I always loved getting the collectors edition of prima guides just for the art and extras, they're huge parts of my game collection.

I love game guides.

Have quite a few for my switch games even ones that don’t really need one (MARIO kart). Have the smash one on pre-order.

Hopefully someone else we do guides for future games. Games like Zelda need and deserve a good guide to accompany them

Surprised it didn't happen years ago, there can only be a handful of people buying these.

This was very inevitable but sad nonetheless. I value the guides I own and always loved when they would include extras like artwork and secrets.

Though I haven’t touched a paper strategy guide in over a decade (thanks, Internet), this is sad news. I remember passing time in book stores as a kid reading their guides. I still have Prima guides to Pokémon Stadium, Melee and Metroid Prime.

I've never bought these guides because I got the impression that they gave inaccurate or contradicting information but I thought they were doing well regardless of that.

Never bought any of these, but was considering buying the upcoming Smash guide.

Internet and game dlc making these redundant.
Always very nicely put together but can't imagine sales were ever stellar after the late 90s.

From family values to books and magazines the internet is killing all that is good.

Again, people are gonna loose their jobs...

Thanks again DLC's and Internet.

Next step : buy all your games digital and then we're gonna close all the gamestores still opened today...

@Elvie How did you get that impression?

I used Prima guides in the early 90s for some games, but I think the only ones I bought in the past two console cycles were collector editions of ME2&3 and FO3&NV

@Elvie They kind of did but it's mostly "tips & tricks"-type deals. Go to primagames.com to get a look.

It is kind of sad, to be honest. The ones they did for Animal Crossing were pretty good. My Mom completed her bug, painting and fish collections because of them.

I always wondered when the Internet would finally kill strategy guides, now that gaming magazines have started to die out. It's a bit sad, though I never really purchased them myself. Super Paper Mario is the only Prima guide I ever bought, way back in 2007, because I found the puzzles to be extremely difficult as a kid for some reason. Like in the 1-3 desert when you have to press I believe the minus button and the 1 button at the same time on the blue pillar to reveal the level exit. I would have never solved that by myself.

I miss the neat throw-ins like the Lylat System Map or the Starfox armament blueprints in Star Fox 64's strategy guide. I think even that is relegated to artbooks and such, these days. I remember buying guides for SMW and SM64's absolutely most confounding secrets, but yeah, can't be much call for this in the digital age. I echo Giygas_95's sentiments.

@Tsurii
Comments like this is why the dislike bytton was added

Man this sucks. Just started getting back into strategy guides as my kids have gotten older. Seemed it was inevitable as everything is online for free now but was just something about flipping through a 2-3 hundred page textbook about a game you love that I will certainly miss!

Dang. I got the Pokémon S/M one for Christmas one year. Surprised this hadn't happened until now.

Great books. Did they even have a competitive company or were they it?

@BladedKnight

The thing is that you live in the US... Here in France we have Micromania which is Gamestop in France BUT we have plenty of independant shops that close one by one and it's really a problem because they do an awesome job...

@Magrane piggyback did zelda... Brady did them too.

Just checked and piggyback did Red dead 2 too....

Last few I have bought are piggyback or prima...

The ones I have to hand anyway

Internet is quicker, better, and there is no clutter.

Harsh. I really pray they find jobs soon. Not a cool way to go into Thanksgiving, & Christmas unemployed.

As for guide book survival, maybe the co.s can continue adding exclusive sketches/artwork, and have special permissions from game devs/pubs to be in the loop on dlc, and all that.

In the 90's, I used to have lots of guides. Sad that people will be out of jobs. Hopefully, the parent co. gave them enough advance notice, so they can secure a job elsewhere. Or, perhaps, they are simply going to offer the employees an opportunity to be transferred to another segment of the parent co.

Nooooo! After Nintendo Power stopped putting out guidebooks I went over to Prima. A sad day for me

Not surprised. I haven't gotten a strategy guide since like... 2004? The internet just eliminated that need for me. Personally I'm fine with this, as I'd rather get the information for free online than have to pay for it. lol

@Harmonie @peanutbuttercup

• Unrelated to the topic, but you both have nice usernames.

Wow. This is sad, people's jobs gone. To this day for the games I really like I would buy a guide. There's just something cool about having those books with notes on them. It's really the end of an era.

Ugh this sucks!

They were fun to have and look at back in the day. I can't speak to the accuracy of whether or not the info inside was completely accurate. When I bought one, it was usually more so for show and to look at the photos than for actual use (though if I did get stuck, I would use them if needed).

Edit: I will add that it is sad people are losing their job. At the same time, this is a lesson in trying to adapt with the times and/or trying to figure out a way to differentiate yourself from the pack. Maybe in some cases, no amount of innovation or being different matters and the inevitable is bound to happen

This makes me so sad. Over the past year I've come to know some of Prima's employees through interactions on streams and Twitter. Love their guides and hate to see this happen, especially around the holidays. I'm really hoping they get good severance packages. Will definitely miss their guides as I have more than a few of them, including collector's guides.

Man, this is really sad

Man, this hits me hard. I understand why this is happening--really, who needs physical guides when YouTube and gaming forums exist? But that means that the next generation probably won't get the same experience and treasured memories I had growing up as my brother and I thumbed through our well-worn Pokemon and Mario guides, obsessing over the completed Pokedex, forming strategies for the post-game, and marveling at all the secret levels and challenges that awaited true completionists. I know that YouTube is the modern equivalent of all this, but it's just not the same, man!

...and I'm not even 20 and I'm already wistfully talking about how things were "back in my day." Oh the irony.

@GrailUK I think the last strategy guide I used was a post-game secrets guide for FFVII I got free with PlayStation Power in 1998. I’ve used GameFAQs ever since.

I feel for the people losing their jobs but honestly print ‘strategy guides’ haven’t been a viable business for 20 years.

Their Disgea game guides will be definitely missed, even with all the websites out there you still couldn’t get all the info for the games, well nothing as comprehensive as their guides.

Those kinds of books were valuable for the wealth of imagery, detailed maps, game art and info. I have quite a few guides from back in the day, including still owning a couple of the free books Nintendo Power used to give out. But these days, GameFAQs and YouTube have everything a gamer could possibly need in order to get through games both popular and obscure, so I'm surprised the strategy guide print sector lasted as long as it did.

It is really a shame. But it's a sign of the times.

@Elvie I don't think they could compete. There are free guides everywhere in the internet so I don't see a lot of people paying for an online version of Prima.

@RadioHedgeFund You speak the truth man.

Thats a shame, I used to like guides for certain games, even just to look nice on a shelf and flick through from time to time.

The biggest I found with them in recent years was game updates and DLC rendering the guides sometimes out of date before they were even published.

I'm pretty sure that the last strategy guide I purchased was Soul Calibur 2. So, yeah, I can see how this business isn't profitable.

The Prima guides were never as good as the Nintendo Power guides. It was nice though to have a flat 2D overworld map. Plus the guides explained stuff in a basic easy to understand way. The “help” on the internet sometimes assumes you’ve spent 200+ hours in all the prior games of the series and know the meta making it hard to find the simple answers. Also the guides didn’t roast you for having “basic” questions

What? No! I have three guides - Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Super Mario Odyssey and Splatoon 2. I also want the Smash Ultimate one. I really like reading these guides!

They did a horrible job competing with free guides online as the quality and accuracy of their guides steadily dropped over the years. They also built a bad habit of not even doing guides for the games that needed them most, IMO. I grew up a regular guide user, but Prima failed to keep my custom. Not surprised I'm not the only one.

The recent Prima guides weren’t great from my experience. The Twilight Princess HD guide had an error in it with regards to one heart piece, and after doing some research it turns out they had the same error in their original guide for the Gamecube! Lazy so and so’s.

Saying that, this is sad news. In an age where we're not allowed manuals because they cost a billion pounds each to produce (or whatever), strategy guides were a great way to get something physical with artwork and whatnot.

I think Piggyback are still making guides? Their guides are quality. Nintendo Power guides will always be my favourite. Being from the UK I had to import loads over the last few decades, but well worth it.

This sucks. I always bought the strategy guides for games that I thoroughly enjoyed but looking back through them they were a mix from Brady games/piggyback and prima.
It’s quite disappointing because I remember playing games with the guidebook in front of me ready to help with collectibles and tricky spots.

The last guide I purchased was for Tomb Raider 1, on Sega Saturn. That was over 20 years ago. GameFAQs or even just typing what you're looking for in Google works just as well today. We have to face that traditional print is phasing out.

I'm surprised they haven't digitally archived their previous guides for online consumption! Sure, you can find tips and tricks online for free, but I'm willing to bet that quite a few people would have been eager to shell out a few bucks for an ebook of their favorite nostalgic game's guide, including all those wonderful screenshots and in-book artwork, immortalized in digital form. It would have been a great way to generate revenue for legacy offerings. Instead they refused to modernize.

YouTube and Google it is, I suppose.

I haven't bought a strategy guide in almost 20 years (pokemon silver) But prima was a great company sad to see them go

To be expected I do have a couple of guides in my closet for Borderlands 2 and another for FFX, though I think both of mine might be Brady instead. Most of the time if i remember right though the Prima guides were never quite as complete as I'd have liked them to be.

Wow. End of an era...this feels so weird. I prefer Bradygames...but still odd to see them go.

Oh that's such a shame, they made lovely books. I suppose the shift to games not being a static thing was bound to render guide books redundant but it really is a shame.

@Magrane Bradygames. Whom I personally thought was better. Nintendo themselves until they outsourced to Prima...I pretty much stopped buying guides around that time as Prima had more mistakes and since I buy guides as cheapo artbooks....

That being said I will always love Prima for the legend of zelda collectors art books. I have all of them even though I dont even use them.

That is unfortunate. Good to know they finished the FallOut76 Guide.

Their "Fallout 76: Prima Official Platinum Edition Guide" is as stunning as the Assassin Creed Odyssey one 😍

People should not shut down offices right before Christmas. Just keep going till February or something.

Just one of hundreds of publishing houses that have been forced to shut down in the past decade. I'm honestly surprised they lasted this long, as this was a tiny niche market even before there walkthroughs and strategy guides online for every game made.

Personally, I only ever bought a few of the Zelda special edition books, more for the sake of the art and the background information than for the tips. If I get stuck in a game I go online for the free tips like everybody else.

They did make nice guides, though. I bought the Piggyback guide for BOTW and it isn't nearly as nice as the older Prima Zelda books. Lots of information, sure, but the flavor, design and layout are nowhere near as nice. And the print is almost microscopic.

@Stuffgamer1 Choosing what games to make a guide for isn't a choice of the guide company, it's a choice of the producers of the games. They commission the companies to create a guide. So a guide not being made isn't the fault of the guide company but rather the game producers. Also, with regards to mistakes, anyone can make a mistake. The online guides people post can have mistakes as well.

@Ryu_Niiyama Prima actually purchased BradyGames so they were one and the same after the purchase.

@Ryu_Niiyama Yeah, I remember I got the Prima book Lego Indiana Jones The Original Adventures which has an error that the third level original called City of Danger was called Motorcycle Escape in the book instead.

@Astingel2016 Oh gosh. My life...is a lie. They must have kept some staff then because I've always preferred BG to Prima.

This is really sad. I've used their guides for years and just bought several this year for Switch games.

@Ryu_Niiyama They merged into just Prima Games in 2015. So not that long again, to be honest, but still it's been a few years.

@Astingel2016 Oh. ok well from my perspective then my comment still had merit. I haven't bought a guide since skyward sword. I feel both relieved and sad at the same time. lol.

@Ryu_Niiyama Of course it has merit! I loved Brady Games! I was lucky a few months back. I was looking for the guide for Pokémon XD Gale of Darkness. One of the guys from Prima that I watch on stream found the special edition with the sparkly cover and sent it to me. I still have it and will never let go of it. I also have the Zelda treasure chest. Thought about selling it at one point but not now!

I don't buy the game guide, but my friend does whenever a new Pokemon game comes out.

It's sad to see more and more publishing companies go out year after year.

Dang... RIP. At least they're going out with a bang with Smash.

Not sad to see them go. Most of their guides weren't very good and were massively overpriced.

@gauthieryannick This isn't up to Prima though. Prima is just an imprint owned by DK, which in turn is owned by Penguin Random House, a MUCH bigger and more diversified company. They don't care about gaming one bit, for them Prima was just little tiny branch of their empire and it wasn't making enough money. They will shift the Prima resources into more profitable areas and by this time next week they won't even remember that they owned an imprint called Prima.

And Penguin Random House are very much into electronic publishing, so they will be just fine.

@Ryu_Niiyama +1 for Bradygames.

Such a shame but at the prices guides were going for in this day and age when GameFAQ and Youtube exist, its not hard to see why this happened. I've only brought guides when they were on offer, like £3-5. Can't be paying £12-15 or more for a guide, not when that could go on a digital game or more....

Have to be honest, I can't say I'm surprised. I haven't bought a strategy guide in years. It's all available online now, and with the likes of DLC they're never going to be fully up to date when in print. I saw the Smash Bros Ultimate guide for pre-order the other day and I thought what's the point? They won't be able to update it with all the stuff that gets added. I may buy it now just for old times sake, seeing as it's one of the last. It is sad of course, I still have fond memories of leafing through my Zelda: ALTTP guide when it was released on GBA. My Golden Sun 1/2 guide is one of my favourite possessions, it got me through those games when I was stumped. I even bought one for Dark Dawn despite not needing it, for old times sake. Now just like Golden Sun, there won't be another one. It's a shame the next generation of players won't have these available to them, but I suppose they don't want them. They're the ones driving the YouTube guide community.

This stinks but it's not unexpected. I hope they keep the online guides for a bit since those are the ones I actually use but I'm going to miss collecting strategy guides.

@Elvie I used to think the same thing until I got a guide for Pokemon, then beat the game way faster than normal. (I was like, 6 at the time.)

@Baker1000 'Tis a shame indeed... I sometimes got guides just to look at extras/collection/lore/ETC. Like how Pokemon guides give you a full physical map of the region of your game. Even though Pokemon games already have a "Trainer Map" item in their it was still cool to have one, you know?

Yeah it's all online but you'll never own it! Nothing beats having all that awesome game art on your shelf. I literally just bought the darksiders 2 game guide a second time to have the art.

I emailed Prima Games to ask them if we would be able to download our purchased digital guides and they said:

At this time, we plan to keep all eGuides available online at least thru March. We're still working out the details of how everything will be handled, and trying to find a more long term solution to make eGuides available after the site shuts down. As soon as we receive more information regarding these plans we will be sure to let our customers know.

PR Speak and I doubt we will see a more long term solution. In other words, after March you will likely lose your digital guides. One more win for digital distribution, right guys?. There really should be some laws protecting consumers.

@personauser0893 Dude. Literally said I think the internet is better. Looks to me you're the one who sees the glass half empty.

@Elvie they already have free online guides. I Accidently found one for some game awhile ago.

No surprise, have trouble with a game find it online.

I feel bad only because they didn’t evolve with how media has changed over the last 20 years. They could have had a website like ignwiki that would have kept them going with online ad revenue and slowly phased out the paper versions.

I appreciated these back before I had a smart phone, but that was awhile ago. I prefer guides online like IGN or YouTube, and if I want a book with glossy pics of the game, I’d rather have an art book of it instead of a guide. I honestly can’t fathom how they stayed in business for so long.

It's sad. Their guides helped me through Zelda OOT back in the day when I was 9 and big games like that scared me.

But that was "back in the day" now you only need hit Google to find a bevy of text and video based guides. It's growing anachronistic in this day and age.

And when they tried to start sweetening the deal with physical goodies... we all know how that turned out. Ain't that right, Prima Estus Flask?

@Ryu_Niiyama Brady was the company that made the horrid FFIX.

I always found Prima to be lower quality than Nintendo Power guides.

@Trajan You can't blame Brady Games for that, Square wanted to do that because they wanted to promote their PlayOnline site. It was a dumb idea but it wasn't the fault of Brady Games.

@Donutman You know that they sold eGuides right?

I think in Japan the strategy guides are still regularly published and almost every game has one or more. Yoshi’s Woolly World never got a guide book here but in Japan there’s not only one for the Wii U but the 3DS version as well.

As a graphic designer who enjoys print, it makes me sad, but this has become the norm. So sorry to those who are losing their jobs.

I loved my Ocarina of Time Prima guide and used it so much the cover came off. I always think about getting one for each new Zelda game but I just don't need so much stuff sitting around the house unfortunately.. sad they're going out of business.

I always thought these were a con, I see them out before the game, thinking what could this possibly tell me?

@personauser0893 Oh well, friend. Not my problem I guess.

@Crono1973
Yeah, the fate of already-purchased eguides was my immediate concern. I have 7 from their site. (Most attained via My Nintendo, as there was literally nothing else worthwhile to me to spend my gold coins on before they expired.) If they don't, in fact, come up with a system to let us download the ones we've already bought, then that is ridiculous. As it is, I thought it was lame not to have been able to download them in the past. Fingers crossed, I guess, but not getting my hopes up.

Oh, and nice user name - CT is my favorite game.

Youtube and Wiki-Guides... I'm guilty, plus I'm cheap and haven't bought a paper guide since the 90's.

Online only goes so far if you have internet or power to run it. The books will always be there and I will get the guides if they interest me and anything Nintendo will be bought by me for ownership and Collector.

Guess I need to be more motivated with Skyward Sword. I paid all those Gold coins for the Prima digital guide and all.....

I know this was inevitable and all with free online guides, and many games getting updated so often that these can become quickly dated, but as someone who grew up with strategy guides before the internet, this is really sad. Good luck to all the employees affected by this.

Well this certainly sucks. I can’t say I’m too shocked though, and I’m a bit surprised they’ve lasted this long since so many online guides are available for free. I certainly haven’t helped, I think the last guide I bought was for Skyrim, way back at launch. Even then, I never used it. That being said, I’ll really miss their guides because the layout was so much better than any of the online guides out there I’ve seen.

On a side note, I never knew they had a location in Indy, that’s only 2-3 hours away from me.

R.I.P. Prima Games

Hopefully all the employees find new jobs quickly. Why does it seem companies always decide to fold around the holiday season?!?

anguished screeches

I'm shocked it took so long. Strategy guides have been obsolete since walkthroughs and GameFAQs became a thing.

Queue 1000 kickstarters

Wiki claims another victim

I don't care for the guides and have never bought them to use as guides, but I have bought a few of the hardcover ones that look really nice. Have all the Zelda ones, a couple Assassin's Creed, Uncharted and Fallout.

Just because the make cook decoration.

sad to see, youtube and other sites have made game guides like this completely redundant, i haven't brought a game guide for quite a while now.

@Tsurii

Makes sense, the days of strategy guides is a bygone era. Now you just look everything up on youtube or fan site wiki's.

|sf>I usually buy a few guides per year, but the Prima Guides have been invaluable when it has come to games with massive catalogs such as Animal Crossing New Leaf and Animal Crossing City Folk. Those Animal Crossing guides are used so often that we own two of them in the household, especially when it comes to looking up the various items, articles of clothing, and themes that the various clothing themes fall into (i.e. Glacie Fashion checks).

Books, magazines, newspapers: anything printed are obsolete.

Anything that can't adapt to the digital age will become extinct. Game changes due to updates, how's a book going to reflect those changes? If Nintendo adds new characters to Smash, it won't be included in the book. Print materials are really outdated.

A bummer to be sure, but they did a really shabby job on the Kirby 64 guide. They didn't even finish the game, as they made no mention of the last stage and claimed that the final boss was a benevolent being who lives on Shiver Star. Seriously.
https://kirby.fandom.com/wiki/Zero2

@Astingel2016 Of course anyone can make mistakes...but I'm not about to excuse some of the horrible examples in professionally written books that easily. They were getting worse about it, and that will impact consumer confidence.

I've been thinking, and I overlooked the other MAJOR factor here earlier: updates and DLC. Printed guide books are increasingly unreliable for those reasons as well, and you can't blame the writers for that. Guides were probably doomed regardless thanks to that.

Oh man, the memories....when i was spoiled little, I got guides just to look at the pictures...

@Crono1973 sold...but who would pay when you get it on next site over for free. And the same said site has been in business selling ads instead of guides.

I suppose it was only a matter of time,
what with the internet and all.
Still sad to see them go, I used to love looking at the artwork in the guides as a kid.

@Donutman I would rather have a well presented guide (even if not perfect) than text on a webpage.

Wow, I still have a lot of guides from them. End of an era.

Very sad news loved there guides, but yeah youtube is a free guide

@Cobalt

*lose

Meh. No tears shed by me. Their services are obsolete.

@Cobalt physical stores are going to be closed due to Amazon/others where you can have your physical copies for cheaper. The only reason I occasionally use those stores is to exchange games I did not enjoy or that I don't think I will ever play again

From a nostalgic point of view I'm sad, but can anyone honestly say they are surprised?

Sad but unsurprising news. Only today was I looking on eBay for old Zelda guides - there's just something about having a physical book with clear screenshots, maps and artwork that's a lot more satisfying to use than YouTube videos or purely text-based guides à la GameFAQs (not to take any credit away from those who kindly and passionately make and share them online for free). My Pokémon Gold & Silver guide from back in the day is practically falling apart now after years of usage.

Alas, times change and the proliferation of DLC has been particularly problematic for printed guides. The Hyrule Warriors one was the first guide I bought in years, partly because of the large amount of bonus artwork included, but much of its content became inadequate or incomplete soon after publication as a result of patches and DLC.

I bought the guides for Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 and Odyssey... Once we beat the games, my wife and I take turns while one uses the guide and one controls the game to find all the stuff. It's a fun way to create a pseudo-co-op...

I remember scanning every line of every page of the Ocarina of Time guide as a kid, trying to learn where you get the doubled magic meter, and concluding that it simply wasn’t in their guide. Maybe I was just a dumb kid, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. Years later I got the Pikmin 3 guide and found its format to be utterly useless.. the maps were nice I suppose, but the Nintendo power guides were always far superior

Wow, that really sucks. I remember collecting these as a kid, I still do so this really sucks.

@ilikeike think you’re old? I have the guide they put out for Pokémon Blue/Red back in the day! Look one up if you ever have the chance. The graphic design is pure retro 90s and the author actually makes a lot of mistakes, or what look like mistakes, cause no one even knew what Pokémon was at that point.

@Pojos98 My older brother actually had that guide! It was pretty worn out by the time I got my hands on it, but I read it all the time nonetheless. The graphic designs really were gloriously 90's. I enjoyed the writing style too, I thought it was more entertaining than a lot of later guides.

@Heavyarms55 let’s hope you’re job never becomes obsolete!

This sucks. I really like physical game guides as both a resource and a collectors item.

@ilikeike wow, very cool! Yeah looking back that was a great guide. I went with the Versus books version for Gold and Silver, but for Gen 1 there just wasn’t anyone else publishing anything.

Sad to see them go. Their guides are often priority purchases on my work budget (I’m a teen/ya librarian at a public library).

Well, that's a shame. I still think there's a good market for strategy guides, even if physical publication is no longer profitable, so I hope someone eventually fills the hole in the market with new official digital strategy guides.

Sure, you can always go to GameFAQs, but then there's no guarantee the info is accurate or the writing is any good; there's no professionally done pictures, charts, and/or maps; and you usually have to wait weeks or even months for a complete walkthrough to be posted.

@macalao914 Yes, they're free, but that's the only advantage they have. Paying for an online guide is worth it just because it's official, professional, and available immediately upon a game's release. As digital releases, they can also easily be updated to match a game's updates and DLC.

@Tsurii Prima may make an occasional error, but they're still a lot more accurate overall than the average Joe Shmoe on the Internet.

I don't like this "no manual for you" trend. Many of my favorite games feature expansive game worlds, complex control schemes and elaborate mechanics - all of which can lead to steep learning curves that are only marginally mitigated by in-game information or tutorials, even when they exist. I greatly prefer having a game manual in hand on day 1 vs. waiting for some mediocre guide on the internet.

Given that games no longer include printed instruction manuals (with a few notable exceptions such as the launch versions of some Nicalis games) and that Switch games don't even include digital manuals like 3DS and Wii U games did, I am more inclined than ever to buy printed game guides. It's sad to see them go.

I note that Mario Kart 8 for the Wii U included a nice manual (printed in the launch version and digital in all versions) - I wish they hadn't dropped it from the Switch version!

@Rodan2000 Jobs become obsolete. That's what happens. Clinging to the past doesn't work. Does it suck for the workers? Of course it does. Change hurts. But there is no stopping it and often times you cause more damage by desperately clinging to the past than you would be adapting to the present.

Even in the age of the Internet, with digital wiki guides and YouTube walkthroughs alike, there was still something so satisfying about having that same guide in physical book form, that you could put bookmarks in, highlight passages from, and have thorough maps and item information guides to look up.

Like Nintendo Power, I have a soft spot for the Prima guides and I'll miss seeing them. But yeah, I know, Internet.

the problem with fighting games in general day 1 patch renders a printed guide useless if it has a large amount of changes this has been true since street fighter 4 came out. the guide basically just becomes a low quality artbook at that point.

With their game company connections, Prima could've pivoted towards printing art books and behind-the-scenes stuff for games. Dark Horse and Udon is making a pretty penny off of those, Prima could've tried going that route and maybe saved their company. There are plenty of games that deserve the art book treatment.

I'm surprised they managed to stick around this long.

As someone who collects Nintendo Power, Brady Games and Prima Guides (purely for collectors purposes, really), the fact anyone buys them as functional guides is a surprise. Of the three publishing groups I just named, Prima is horrendous and their guides have been consistently terrible for two decades. Some of their most recent titles like the Smash Guide only includes one page for the Spirits mode which is laughable. You used to buy guides to find secrets; and now Prima doesn't even cover basic information that is slightly more indepth than what you'd get going in blind. Never mind that the medium can't be updated; their pay-for-walkthroughs are significantly worse than any freely written guide online and considerably less easy to find relevant information in.