NRevolution, a Nintendo oriented UK game magazine, was rumored to be suspended. The magazine’s cancellation was confirmed today via MCV with a short statement from NRevolution’s managing director Daiman Butt.
“The decision to suspend N”¢Revolution has been taken because it has become increasingly obvious that Nintendo’s strategy for Wii and DS is no longer in line with Imagine Publishing’s target readership, and has moved increasingly away from the hardcore gaming community that is our specialty,”…
“With many new launches and especially acquisitions coming to fruition, we believe the resources and manpower are better spent in other markets where advertising revenue and PR support are stronger and sustained…”
After hearing this statement my fanboyish Nintendo defense system fired up to provide a reason for halting magazine publication other than blaming the problem on Nintendo. Thoughts of E3 swept away my anger towards NRevoution and gave Mr. Butt’s decision a logical sight.
The fact that internet blogs (yours truly) are overtaking sluggish magazine publications does give a large possibility for suspending subscriptions, but is that really the case? Nintendo-themed magazines had enough trouble getting through the Gamecube era with hardly a peep from PR and now publishers have to get by each month with 100+ pages of…Wii Music, Animal Crossing, and lame Genesis VC titles? Nothing against those games, but the lack of properly balanced games in the market is ridiculous. This alone could very well lead to poor content and subscription drops.
Whether you believe or not in labeling “core” titles, it’s obvious Nintendo’s market has lost equilibrium with the fanbase.
Rest in peace NRevolution. Prepare the coffin for Nintendo Power.
I have a feeling NP will not dye and I hope it will not cause I love reading it.
Magazines are dead. Long live the internet!
No way is his name really Mr. Butt.
Are you serious?
This is a sad day indeed, and Nintendo Power has been dead to me ever since they changed publishers and cut my last 3 issues.
All they had to do was start throwing in some AARP ads and they’d pick up part of the audience they’ve lost.
Good. That’s one less “hardcore” magazine to stand in Nintendo’s way.
The revolution continues, and the New Market continues to take over.
I bought one copy of NRevolution at Barnes & Noble (imported, I live in CA) and I enjoyed a lot of it. It’s a shame “Nintendo’s market has lost equilibrium with the fanbase.” I enjoy reading from something I can hold, or go to the bathroom with, or just have in front of my face without a keyboard.
nintendo power won’t die. they still have around a half a million sales per month (i think?)
hopefully nintendo will stop their casual nonsense
Magazines are dead? Maybe to cheap-skates like yourself. Not to me. I gotta say though, I am a life-long die hard Nintendo fanboy, but as of late I have only been playing Little Big Planet and SSFIITHD remix and a couple other things on ps3. World of Goo was fun and I’ll still fire up the Wii for Tetris, but I foresee a lot less wii in my future. The PS3 is supposed to have a 10 year life span and it feels to me like the Wii is allready on its last legs. I think that is just the sad truth… If consumers demand motion controls and a flood of casual crap then Sony and Microsoft will make that happen for their current-gen consoles. Nintendo has greater obstacles than the other big 2 in its future. Crappy online content for games, crap horse power for the wii. It pains me to say it but I feel like I am being lured off of the Nintendo band wagon by all of the fun that there is to be had elsewhere. Truth be told; an all-nintendo magazine is not that appealing these days.
What a bunch of crybabies. Magazines in general are in trouble, including several 360, PS3, and even EGM, which covers all of them, and has no such dearth of “hardcore games” to cover. The internet is slowly chewing them all up, save for Nintendo Power who is benefiting from the peeling away of all these other mags. This is no reason to blame somebody else. They also break one of the first rules of business by blaming the market for their own failures.
And puh-lease, stop with all of the “Nintendo fans split with rest of userbase” bullshit. Nintendo’s own games have been selling better than ever, what with Smash Bros. Brawl in one year already having sold more than Melee’s seven, Mario Kart Wii in just over half a year eclipsed Double Dash’s 5 year number and is quickly gaining the highest selling Mario Kart in History (MKDS, on another console begreaved to be selling to “another market”). Mario Galaxy has already destroyed Mario Sunshine’s 6 years. Twilight Princess has sold significantly more than Wind Waker. Even Metroid Prime 3 has sold more than the previous installment. And of course, all of this is by Nintendo themselves, with third parties tricked into believing casual games are the REAL ticket to Wii, despite meager sales for most of them. this shows Nintendo’s fanbase for their core titles and core titles in general on the Wii is actually INCREASING, despite all the hoopla of casual gamers and other such label-throwing.
But, this sort of dumb narrative makes for easy, thoughtless, me-too copy without actual journalistic effort, and if their articles and coverage during their magazine’s run were anything like ResidentialEvil’s comment, they deserve to go out of business for insulting their readers. “HURK HURK OLD PEOPLE PLAY THE WII. LOL!!111one! POWNEND!!!11” Maybe they should follow their example and grow up. Christ.
Jeff said it all! agree 100%
Also… Mr Butt… haha sorry but that is funny (ahhh I’m so childish)
One less good mag to to read. That’s a shame, I enjoy actually having something in my hands to read now and again as opposed to being always in front of the keyboard.
Looks like they have good reason to shut down, and Nintendo, with their successful new strategy based mostly on the casual market is obviously one important factor in the death of the magazine, but there is also, obviously, other factors involved as well.
“Truth be told; an all-nintendo magazine is not that appealing these days.”
Very true.
I still enjoy the ones that have a mixture of all platforms. Those are truly a gamers magazine, and worth buying to enjoy news about all systems in the game world.
An all Nintendo mag should never run out of content. The wii and DS make up over 68% of the games market. They just want press stories spoonfed to them as PR packages.
The guy is just being a dick. Let him be one in obscurity.
^Whom are you addressing here, Jeff? Everyone has a right to their opinion.
Correct, Nintendo systems are owning the current video game market right now, but do mags really want to publish a 5 page cover story on Petz, or Carnival Games? I do not doubt the amount of content, but the quality of the content. NRevolution’s subscriber base consisted of a large percentage of your average “Smash Brother”, if you will. Nintendo’s famous tight lid on upcoming anticipated projects contributes to lack of proper journalism for the mags reader base.
The games you listed (Galaxy, Twilight Princess, MP3, Mario Kart, SSBB, etc…) are all popular, fan-loved titles which sold very well, but each one of those titles was developed with a bit more casual player base in mind. Brawl is slower, mechanics slightly dragging. Mario Kart utilizes some serious rubber banding to keep inexperienced racers in the top 3. Twilight Princess’s dungeon design layout is more linear. Galaxy’s gameplay is intact, but level design is built a bit more linear and blocky compared to Sunshine/SM64.
These titles are wonderful, but contain the ever so common casual crowd parasite. I praise historically core games trying to bring in more of the casual market, but I look down on the idea when it begins to interfere with the normal user’s gameplay experience. I loved how MP3 stuck to a more core centered crowd, but allowed a casual, pick-up-and-play user to simply lower the difficulty and cursor interface without altering level layout, gameplay, mechanics, etc…
People can whine all they want about how the video game market shouldn’t be segregated into “core” or “casualâ€, but in reality it is the truth. What’s ironic is that the one company trying to fuse these two markets together is tearing them farther apart at the same time. “Mending†the two clearly defines a barrier.
I love Nintendo. Always will. They’ve just hit a bit of a rough spot with keeping everyone pacified. Both Nintendo and fans need to take a breather from debating and just try to make up.
How stupid…
when 2009 seems soo hardcore; here’s a list of some of the goodness as feautured in IGN’s “top ten things we’re thankful for”
In number one: 2009
(And Great Hardcore Games) Are Just Around the Corner
Not only does 2009 signal the end of an arguable disappointing year for the Wii, it also harbors in a slew of very promising games. For the 2006 holidays Nintendo gave us Twilight Princess. For 2007, we got Mario Galaxy. This year…Wii Music and the same Animal Crossing game we’ve already played. Twice. But, MadWorld, The Conduit, Punch-Out!, Cave Story, House of the Dead: Overkill, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Overlord: Dark Legend, Sin & Punishment 2… All of these titillating games lie just beyond the crest of the New Year. 2008 has been described as another “Pac-Man Vs. year” for Nintendo. Whether or not you feel that way, it’s exciting to know all these new games are in our near future.
I’m sorry Jake, but Jeff is right.
They’re blaming the market when it’s fact that magazine numbers are down, when it’s fact the internet is overtaking traditional journalism (TV, newspapers and magazines) and it’s fact that what you said about “casual parasite” is pretty clear and erroneous bullshit based on rather minute things that actually follow in the general trend of what most people consider “hardcore” games, NOT the other way round.
“Whom are you addressing here, Jeff? Everyone has a right to their opinion.”
I was addressing Daiman Butt. He’s either being an idiot or trying to drum up business for the other mags under the Imagine label.
“Correct, Nintendo systems are owning the current video game market right now, but do mags really want to publish a 5 page cover story on Petz, or Carnival Games?”
They should cover whatever it is they have to cover in order to stay in business. Sometimes even a job you like is a job sometimes. It’s not a day spa.
“I do not doubt the amount of content, but the quality of the content. NRevolution’s subscriber base consisted of a large percentage of your average “Smash Brotherâ€, if you will. Nintendo’s famous tight lid on upcoming anticipated projects contributes to lack of proper journalism for the mags reader base.”
They should become better journalists then. It’s not Nintendo’s job to spoonfeed their stories to them. Nintendo’s job is to make awesome games and market them, and it’s this magazines job to cover them by trying to ask questions or set up interviews. And I don’t buy the whole “readership” thing, mainly because nobody even heard of this magazine before this tantrum, and other magazines with no such “content issues” are also failing in this internet age. They are the first ones to get bit, and that sucks for them I guess but it’s really nobody’s fault.
“The games you listed (Galaxy, Twilight Princess, MP3, Mario Kart, SSBB, etc…) are all popular, fan-loved titles which sold very well, but each one of those titles was developed with a bit more casual player base in mind. Brawl is slower, mechanics slightly dragging. Mario Kart utilizes some serious rubber banding to keep inexperienced racers in the top 3. Twilight Princess’s dungeon design layout is more linear. Galaxy’s gameplay is intact, but level design is built a bit more linear and blocky compared to Sunshine/SM64.
These titles are wonderful, but contain the ever so common casual crowd parasite. I praise historically core games trying to bring in more of the casual market, but I look down on the idea when it begins to interfere with the normal user’s gameplay experience. I loved how MP3 stuck to a more core centered crowd, but allowed a casual, pick-up-and-play user to simply lower the difficulty and cursor interface without altering level layout, gameplay, mechanics, etc… ”
I mean this with all due respect as I think you are one of the better writers here and you must be a little confused, but these two paragraphs are totally useless. Your main, crippling logical flaw is that you are starting with the conclusion that Nintendo has been making more casual games and the Wii is a casual console and working backwards from there. The first thing you gotta do is get an IRONCLAD definition of “casual game” and once you are done with that monumental task you actually have to legitimately prove Nintendo did include more “casual elements…” whatever they are. But instead you start from the perspective that the Wii is for casuals mainly, and any hardcore game that succeeds must have casualized itself to attract a new audience. That’s why your evidence seems so nitpicky and obtuse.
“People can whine all they want about how the video game market shouldn’t be segregated into “core†or “casualâ€, but in reality it is the truth.”
There are two ways to tackle this one, the first is to totally disagree with the whole idea of market segregation, as Nintendo has never said word one about casual gamers. This is a term invented by its critics, and came around when Nintendogs started selling very highly to explain why the DS was beating up the press-favored PSP. And as such is always used in order to downplay the success of anything that’s beating something the press favored. The second way is to say that this is the way it has ALWAYS BEEN and people only give Nintendo crap about it now because… I dunno. I guess they just don’t like them or something. And while your assertion that-
“What’s ironic is that the one company trying to fuse these two markets together is tearing them farther apart at the same time.”
makes good copy and is an interesting narrative, it’s not necessarily the truth. The two markets are simply “gamer” and “non-gamer.” If anybody starts with Wii Play and moves up to Mario Kart, that is him wanting more sophisticated games, not the games coming down to him. That’s a fallacy meant to downplay success that doesn’t follow the rules or predictions the press made.
“I love Nintendo. Always will. They’ve just hit a bit of a rough spot with keeping everyone pacified. Both Nintendo and fans need to take a breather from debating and just try to make up.”
I disagree whole-heartedly. The same exact thing happened to the DS only 3 years ago. People were all freaked out because the DS was beating the favored PSP, and they made up stories of “fan tension with the new gamers.” Again, makes good copy. Easy to write. No research or insight involved. Still not evidently factual.
I agree with jeff for the most part… but in the last post he brings up something unrelated to the dumbass magazine crybaby about Mario Kart Wii I keep hearing yet have never, EVER experienced.
Rubber banding.
I’m sorry, i’ve played MKWii vs some impossibly bad players and they never EVER come close to catching up on me even with a constant barrage of over powered weapons. Plus skilled driving has /always/ proved vital to me versus other competent players.
The Need for Speed series has game wrecking rubber banding, I simply scratch my head at this claim about MKWii.
Why anybody makes a study on how many ‘hardcore’ gamers play wii? I think much more than some people believe (or want us to believe).
maybe they should’ve increased their focused on gaming culture. many magazines should. We care to read about more than just what new games are coming. We’d like insight into the designers and publishers. It’s always great reading the opinion of an insider, finding out about the business part of the industry and many other things. People always want to learn how to get their foot in the door with designing or becoming a part of the industry, I don’t know much they covered that, but that among many things could have helped them. Too often game magazines are just giant ads with few bits of journalism in them. The culture is what the core feeds off of, which is why the internet dominates our news feeds. It gives us more articles and other bits about the culture of gaming and not just some free ad about what’s coming out.
Meh I still got my PC and internet till doomsday. Hardcore Wii is dead for months.
Nrevolution is simply taking a bed wetting approach to this. Other games magazines are having a bad time also, in fact more than gaming magazines are having a hard time. The internet combined with the economic situation going on, makes somethings harder to buy than others.
Really blaming a bigger casual market for the demise of your magazine is just pitiful. So where did all the so called hardcore types go? Did they just vanish because there is a few more party games on the rack at Wal*Mart? Your telling me that more potential customers is the reason you couldn’t sell your magazine?
Really, your product just doesn’t sell as much as others. Thats the risk you take in business. No need to lash out like a lonely child on a message board, specially when the other Nintendo magazine sells well still.
NRevolution’s announcement amounts to this: “Nintendo has changed, but we don’t want to.”
The market for a Nintendo-based magazine is there, and larger than ever before, but the market it different than it was before. Changing a the marketing and direction of a publication like this to better suit it’s audience is possible, but admittedly not easy.
As someone who owns and enjoys a Wii, I don’t give a damn if NRevolution shuts down. They stated that the Wii audience wasn’t worth the time or effort to support, so good riddance to them.
You’d be hard pushed to come up with an excuse for low magazine sales more feeble than this.
There are plenty of other Nintendo magazines still in circulation, all of which somehow manage to find plenty of content for each issue that would pleas a so-called “hardcore” gamer.
I’d also wager that with the internet, their “hardcore” readership obviously realise there’s little point in buying a paper magazine when its information is old the day after its printed.
Magazines are yesterday and today is all about demos. Microsoft and Sony get it, which is why they have such strong 3rd party tie-in and online sales. Even the iPhone has more free demos than Nintendo and Apple lets users RATE the products. Neither Microsoft, Sony, nor Nintendo allow you to rate the games on their stores. Way to ignore the social media era.
Who still trusts publications, print OR web, anyway?
Im sure Nintendo is also to blame for every other video game magazine closing down, there arent many left by now.
That’s great that NRevolution covers hard core but you cant blame Nintendo because your coverage is limited to Hard Core, that is your problem. Expand or die?
I dont have to worry about my magazine discontinuing until Nintendo deems it unnecessary because I subscribe to Nintendo Power an official magazine not NRevolution magazine which is not official and can go under if there is not hard core news. I dont care about hard core news I care about Nintendo news and everything Nintendo is doing, whatever it may be.
Yea blogs are taking over but they can’t replace everything. You can order magazines and newspapers electronically. Bottom line blog can give you more info faster and slightly more up to date. BUT…magazines usually have much more insider information.