Future Publishing all about the benjamins
Reason #8,000,000 I don't trust Wikipedia:
"The Official Xbox Magazine is dedicated to review every single Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade, downloadable content, and expansion pack title that ever comes out no matter how small or unpopular the game is."
Contrast that with the latest "cover" of Official Xbox Magazine (pictured above) and you'll see what I'm talking about. It features a full-blown ad for Rainbow Six Vegas 2, serving as a psuedo-cover, hiding the "real" one which features Fallout 3. Also, the back cover features an ad from a second Ubisoft game, Tom Clancy's FutureWar, to be released this fall.
"There's a two-page spread for Rainbow Six Vegas 2 not even twenty pages into the magazine," says Tim Rogers of gaming site insert credit. "Magazines have been figuratively selling their covers to the highest bidder for years now. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that a magazine did so literally."
Ubisoft, by the way, is the same company that decided EGM's coverage of Assassin's Creed was "the last straw" and decided to pull ads and coverage from the magazine. Future Publishing is the same company that publishes Nintendo Power, as well.
Some of you may be wondering why I care about this at all. Well, there are some lines in journalism, and some of them, if only for the sake of preserving integrity and proving honesty (sad people have to do this nowadays, but, y'know), shouldn't be crossed. Journalism has long had a funny little relationship with advertising; a fair portion of us have a sort of 'I'll put up with you because we're roomates and this place is great for the price' kind of relationship with it. Therefore, when advertising actually overtakes the actual content of the magazine (in more ways than one), that's the equivalent of your roomate setting up shop in your room. Your room! It's about not putting a dollar sign on every thing on this planet, as social commentator Bill Hicks would say. You want some ads? Fine. We'll help get the word out. You help us, we help you, hopefully people will make up their own minds about the ads, and we'll all be alright. But this? Why should I trust OXM after this? If they're willing to sell off the covers, why not the content?
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I don't see what the problem is. The magazine itself is geared toward a certain demographic, and the games they advertise will be toward that group as well. The group is already inclined to buy it, and would be interested in that product.
It's not like the ad is telling you to buy crack or punch babies.
The problem (and of course, this is just one opinion) is that it's not honest. What if the game is s***? Because this coverage is there simply because it's bought, it tells me nothing other than when the game is coming out, essentially.
Does it deserve all that extra coverage? Should it be allowed to have it simply because it can be bought? That's a lot of space that could be spent on games that actually deserve it, or deserve it more, anyway.
No advertisement tells anyone if the game is bad or good, no matter what type of ad it is. It's an ad. It's supposed to get you to buy it. And I dunno about you, but I don't suddenly get up and go buy a game just because of a snazzy advertisement. At least, not without doing research on my own.
If anyone is so easily influenced by advertising, well, they deserve to be throwing their money away.
Right..which is why anything more than a two-page ad is essentially useless. It's also undeserving of a cover, not only because that essentially demeans all other coverage in the magazine.
Indeed.
When I look at magazine covers, they already look like advertisements, though. Usually, the cover tells you briefly what the magazine features, so it's advertising for both the 'zine and the games.
This full page thing is like a switch off, I think. The magazine isn't advertising for itself anymore, so the ad is essentially targeting those who already buy the 'zine on their own or regularly.
It's like the free newspapers being distributed here in Vancouver these days. All the daily local/international coverage... after flipping past that glaring front page ad for insurance/travel/breath mints!
I can tell you for a fact that these advertising covers aren't on retail stores. At least, not any I've seen.