Official PlayStation Magazine UK Publishes Final Issue, Last Official Games Magazine - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 June 2021 / 2,688 Views
Future Publishing announced it has retired the Official PlayStation Magazine UK, which was the last remaining official games magazine still running.
A note was sent out to subscribers on Friday and a tweet from Lara Jackson confirmed the retirement of the magazine. Future Publishing announced the magazine would be rebranding itself as Play, and would keep the same editorial team.
"We're getting in touch to let you know that the Official PlayStation Magazine has taken a well-earned retirement, and we're making an exciting fresh start. Welcome to Play: the new magazine for PlayStation gamers," reads the note sent to subscribers.
The Official Nintendo Magazine was closed in October 2014 and the Official Xbox Magazine closed in April 2020. Both were also published by Future. The first official games magazine was Nintendo Power, which ran from Jule 1988 to December 2012.
Say whaaaaat?! Goodnight, OPM. Looking forward to what's next! pic.twitter.com/g7d63zzWxr
— Lara Jackson (@ByLaraJackson) April 30, 2021
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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All we are is dust in the wind...
All in all is all we are
Yes but guys being on VGChartz means we are all made of stardust except any evil bastards who
click dislike on my completely rational comments (and that includes my psychiatrist "I know you are here ") they are made of what's sitting in the bottom of my vacuum cleaner, also speaking of dust let me make it clear to our more ahem gullible members. it's bad enough that you see buying purely cosmetic items as a cheap and easy way of powering up your character but believing in PIXIE DUST is going past gullible onto idiocy.
The joy of getting this magazine as a kid, when the internet just couldn't do justice. This is a feeling kids of this and next generation won't know.
God damn this is a big F.
I grew up with mags like these at the time, and it's really depressing to see them going out like this.
You know what, I'ma buy this, even though I don't own a PS5, but simply because I grew up with mags like these, and I want that nostalgia hit.
Long form journalism is dying across the board. It gets replaced with cringey Twitter/Facebook style news containing little more than rumor, speculation, and outright lies.
Nintendo Power was both my first gaming mag and my first official gaming mag. I was only seven when I saw what was to become my first issue in a local store, so I wasn't a proficient reader at the time. What drew me to the mag were the level map-outs and the cheat codes in the Classified Information section. I had to have it! There was no internet back then (that any normal person had access to anyway), so this was what there was. NP wound up inspiring the creation of a whole new generation of gaming magazines and helped me become a more proficient reader by giving me that specialized motivation I needed.
In the subsequent decade (the 1990s), I collected various issues of a wide range of gaming publications including also GamePro, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Game Players and Ultra Game Players, PC Gamer, Video Games, Game Informer, and a couple less regular ones like Game Fan. My actual SUBSCRIPTIONS though wound up being to official publications: Nintendo Power, Official PlayStation Magazine, and Official Dreamcast Magazine. I just found the official ones to be more comprehensive in that specialized way I was looking for. You know the old saying about how "a jack of all trades is a master of none?" Well that's sorta how most gaming mags felt to me; a little mediocre in the quality of their coverage because of the sheer breadth of what they were covering. Official publications had a brand-based focus. They could be ludicrously propagandish to that end (which is part of why I sometimes wanted the more brand-neutral takes of other mags; to balance my perspective), but they got into more detail about the games and platforms they covered often, I found.
Like probably most people, I had something of a falling out with gaming mags over the 2000s once sites like IGN came online and started offering me a superior volume of gaming-related info both constantly (rather than monthly, quarterly, or annually) and for FREE. The romance was over. Still, sometimes I miss the simpler days of getting a surprise preview VHS tape of Donkey Kong Country in the mail as a bonus for being a Nintendo Power subscriber, that sorta thing. The absence of the broad social movements around and against games that are commonplace today because major publishing companies had roughly absolute power over the gaming narrative. I miss those things sometimes the way I often miss playing games together, actually in the same room as other people more often, rather than "together" online God knows how many miles apart. We can all be suckers for nostalgia sometimes. I am too. To which end, I mourn the loss of the last official gaming publication. It was the first official gaming publication that got into gaming news and gamer culture in the first place. The next generation will have to find some other (probably better) source of entry.
sighs Another sign that I'm aging and the relics of my childhood are disappearing.
NP was a weird beast. On the one hand, it was a marketing tool for Nintendo, one that we paid for, and didn't really make a lot of pretensions on that score. On the other hand, it had more actual gaming content than other gaming magazines and much better previews for games on Nintendo systems, both first- and third-party. They had to squeeze a lot of reviews in for multiple systems, arcades, and PC, plus they had a lot of pop culture stuff in them. So only the biggest games actually got a lot of tips and maps.
last time i picked one up they come with demo discs back in original psx days
Wasn't there already a magazine called Play? I seemto remember it got mocked a lot forthe quality of its reviews.
Yes Play was part of Future Publications suite of gaming mags, it biggest market was the UK and Australia. it's coming back because even though they talk about ending OPM and a new start they are basically just changing the OPM name to Play with the same staff as a result of the OPM branding no longer available.
I still have a few copies of The Official Xbox Magazine. Just a few fun pieces of memorabilia. It's fun to look back in them and see what games editors were hyped up about. My mother would buy me a copy when we went grocery shopping and we passed by the magazine aisle. I find it sad that gaming magazines are going away, but it is what it is. Doesn't Game Informer also still do print magazines? So there are still some out there.
Lack of demo (discs) hurts. Plus hard to buy magazines when we've been told for the last year we aren't allowed to go outside and buy them.
R.I.P ... Your services won't be forgotten.
Probably become a podcast like Nintendo Power is now
I remember when the final issue of the US OPM came out, I had been collecting each issue and had a wonderful time reading every one of them. I hate that magazines have died off. The internet and digital distribution have become so powerful.
nothing last forever,
welcome to the digital age...
Well they are starting a new magazine still for playstation so I don't really see the point.
It was the official playstation mag so the branding belongs to Sony, just like the official Nintendo and Xbox mags belong to Nintendo and MS so that means they are published under licence , in this case Future Publishing (google them) are bringing back the Play name to replace the OPM masthead since they no longer hold the licence to OPM .
That much I imagined, but it isn't the end of all and they can even keep most of what they were doing, perhaps only with less privileged information, but also with freedom to go after rumor.
Unfortunately no and when I last moved 6 years ago I gave my collection of various videogame mags away. Why move hundreds of mags only to have them collect dust in the garage when I could get my fix online was my thinking at the time so I only held onto old guide and strategy mags like expert gamer, psx strategies, powerstation etc . I don't know if your familiar with it but Gamefan is the only review type mags I still have ,still not as painful as selling my more than 2,000 comic book collection of Marvel / DC plus assorted graphic
novels when I was a poor Uni student.
