Back with an EDGE
June 24th, 2007I’ve just come back from my European vacation and on my way out to my first vacation destination I happened to go through a London airport. With a ton of time to kill before my next flight, I checked out some magazines and discovered “EDGE”. I’d heard good things about EDGE before but never picked up a subscription because of a crazy subscription price ($75 for 13 issues). Despite the somewhat ridiculous newsstand price (nearly $9 USD), I decided to pick it up.
It is, by far, the best videogame magazine I’ve ever read. It reminds me a bit of the old “Next Generation” magazine (and is published, I think, by the same company) before it sort of became like all the other crappy VG mags, but is probably even better than that ever was. The articles are actually well written and don’t sound like they’ve been written by obsessed fanboys. It’s actually remarkably levelheaded and intelligent writing.
Get this… the previews actually contain criticisms and real impressions on what works and what doesn’t. Are we listening American media? Why are the American print magazines so inferior?
I haven’t plunked down the $75 bucks yet for the subscription yet, but I’m now seriously considering it. AnyAmerican print magazine want to show me why I’m wrong and save me some money?
Posted in Admin, Jeff, Journalism |
June 24th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
American Print VG magazine executive: “What’s that yousay? Some random guy got into EDGE Magazine and is telling people to buy it on his website? That could be a problem. What’d you say the website was again? Oh, never mind, who’s ever heard of A Link to the Future?”
June 24th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
“It is, by far, the best videogame magazine I’ve ever read. ”
Thats a pretty big hyperbole. Are you sure you’re not exaggerating? and how unbiased are they?
they had a recent cover where there was a golden wiimote with “WHO DARES WIN”….declaring the wii already won, i guess. doesn’t seem that unbiased to me.
June 24th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Did you actually read the article? It’s incredibly hard to find anything in media biased toward Nintendo anymore. There’s more than plenty biased for the conventional conglomerates of Sony and Microsoft though.
June 25th, 2007 at 7:10 am
Bias is still bias. And everyone is falling all over themselves to praise the Wii, so I’m not sure that’s true anymore.
As for decent domestic print mags, the only one I still think is good is — believe it or not — Game Informer, the one Gamestop sells.
June 25th, 2007 at 7:22 am
I’ll admit I probably haven’t read every game magazine ever made, but I did have a year subscription to EGM that I pretty much hated, and every time I open up another one at a book store it just seems like more of the same crap. With EDGE the difference was immediately noticeable to me.
As for Nintendo Bias, I think the article is actually fairly well balanced. It basically just looks at Nintendo’s history and talks about what they did right and wrong, and basically how their strategy to essentially never sell at a loss means that, despite 2 console “failures” (in terms of market share anyway), that they’ve always remained profitable. The “Who Dares Wins” comes from the fact that it seems like whenever Nintendo may run into some rough times, they basically innovate themselves into greater success, with the last two examples being the DS (facing tough competition from the PSP) and the Wii (after their worst console showing yet). It doesn’t quite declare victory for the Wii yet, but does show that it’s selling at a rate that seems to indicate a “console leader” for this generation.
I’ll take another look at Game Informer, but from what I remember, I was never incredibly impressed with it.
Aside from Game Informer, though, no one has suggested an alternative. Anyone else?
June 25th, 2007 at 9:50 am
I read Game Informer. If you buy a lot of used games, it’s worth it just for the discount you get you when order it via gamestop. Otherwise, it’s not bad. It doesn’t cover Nintendo much, although its getting better there. I actually has some exlusives. A couple of months ago it had a really deep cover story on Uncharted, when websites never even mentioned it at the time. I like it for the most part, but it’s not great. I’ve never read EDGE and I was not particularly impressed with EGM either.