As of October of this year, Nintendo of America relinquished its hold of Nintendo Power and handed over publishing duties to Future US, the same media corporation behind the official Xbox and PlayStation magazines. Two issues into the transition, Nintendo Power's writing staff and format haven't changed much, but the number of ads certainly has!
Brian E. recently wrote to Pulse, Nintendo Power's letter section, the following note: "The new Nintendo Power has way too many ads. I am otherwise glad about the change-over. Nintendo Power seems intact and just the way I like it, but the ads are really overwhelming."
Has there really been a noticeable increase of advertisements since Future US took over the reins? Let's compare Future US's first edition with the last issue released under Nintendo of America's administration.
Nintendo Power (Nintendo), November 2007/V221- 116 pages
- Two-page ads: 1
- One-page ads: 18
- Half-page ads: 1
- 98 pages
- Two-page ads: 5
- One-page ads: 31
- Half-page ads: 1
Chris breaks down the advertising situation in a way we can all understand, but we'll have to wait and see if the content-to-ad ratio will improve in Nintendo Power's upcoming issues as he claims.
One change we're happy to see with Future US's takeover is the "Holiday Special," an extra issue (with extra ads) thrown in with your twelve-issue subscription. Since we're counting ads anyway, here's another quick analysis of Nintendo Power and rival magazine EGM's holiday editions.
Nintendo Power (Future US), Holiday 2007/V223- 100 pages
- Poster ads: 2
- Two-page ads: 3
- One-page ads: 29
- Half-page ads: 4
- 100 pages
- Poster ads: 0
- Two-page ads: 9
- One-page ads: 17
- Half-page ads: 2
We were a little annoyed, however, with the Warhammer 40K: Squad Command ad for only using screenshots from the PSP version of the game and not the DS edition. Would it have killed THQ to switch the images to the Nintendo DS version for this ad before it appeared in an obviously Nintendo-focused magazine? The PSP game looks drastically different from its dual-screened brother.
_thumbnail.jpg "Prince of Persia: The Fallen King")
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-25-2007 @ 5:50PM
Jake said...
Future US just ran in Mac|Life and the Official Xbox Magazines a 30-freaking-page ad for AT&T. 30 pages of AT&T ads + over 24 pages of other ads. I've been complaining about this forever now. They won't respond to my emails.
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11-25-2007 @ 7:12PM
AAAA Bateries said...
@1.
It was in the "Official Playstation" magazine too. It's just wrong. Luckily it was a preview issue, as I'll never get any of Future's magazines again.
11-25-2007 @ 8:22PM
Damian G. said...
Nintendo Power's volumes have had their months off ever since their July/August issue a couple of years ago (as in, one would get the December issue at the end of October, not November). With the Holiday issue as a regular feature, this problem should be fixed.
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11-25-2007 @ 8:33PM
Seph-kun said...
The person that wrote to NP got a reply along the lines of "there's more ads because it's the holiday season." If the January issue doesn't have less ads, then a major wtf to Future US.
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11-25-2007 @ 10:40PM
Setai said...
Does anyone know if the Holiday edition will be available on newstands or is it subscription-only?
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11-25-2007 @ 11:24PM
raindog said...
I understand why Nintendo felt they had to give their official publication to a third-party publisher: having the official magazine published in-house means fewer third-party Nintendo magazines (at least here in the US) and less coverage in non-platform-specific magazines. Magazine coverage, like any other press coverage, is free advertising for them, but in-house Nintendo Power broke that mechanism. This should fix it.
It's just too bad that the bargain involved cutting the pages by 20% while nearly doubling the ads. I knew the first issue under Future's banner seemed a little less substantial (at the time, I thought "skeletal") than it had been, but had no idea it was this bad. They've basically cut their editorial content in half.
We'll see if it improves, but right now I'm kinda feeling ripped off, having just renewed my subscription at the same price I'd been paying for twice the content.
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11-27-2007 @ 4:45PM
JM said...
I think the worse thing is that you apparently don't get any good free gifts with the subscription anymore. I mean WTF? Special Digest Version of the Phantom Hourglass Strategy Guide?
They used to give out T-shirts or *real* strategy guides.
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