Due to launch before the end of the year, the Aussie edition of Game Informer will be published by Citrus Media and backed by EB Games. Much of Game Informer’s success overseas is down to its relationship with Gamestop, the biggest games retailer in the US and owner of EB Games. Gamestop customers get cheap subscriptions, you see. And with a readership of that size, Game Informer is often the first print publication to bring news of the biggest games.

We caught up with Game Informer Australia’s launch editor Chris Stead, former editor of Australian GamePro and Gameplayer.com.au, for a quick chat about what you can expect.

Hey Chris, when’s the first issue out?
The first issue will be available before Christmas. Your readers should sign-up to the Facebook group Game Informer Australia to get updated on exact dates in the coming weeks.

So you’re the editor, but who else do you have on the local staff?
I’m the editor. We will have a local freelance team as well, headed up by Adam Mathew who I believe is one of the great reviewers on the local scene.

What’s the relationship with EB? Will EB members get it free?
EB Games will play a huge role in our distribution model, but that is the extent of the relationship. You’ll be able to pick the magazine up at the counter when you’re doing your games shopping at the bargain price of $4.95 and we’ve briefed the EB staff on just why Game Informer is considered the number 1 games magazine on the planet, so they’ll be helping us get the word out there. You’ll also be able to pick up a pretty amazing subscription offer through the stores. And that’s where the relationship stops – the magazine’s editorial independence is complete, it is solely distribution.

Will it be distributed in store and newsagents?
As well as picking it up at EB, you will be able to find it at newsagents across the country for the same price. However, I believe that most Aussie gamers will feel compelled to subscribe once they get the product in their hands and get a feel for just how ahead of the game it is… especially as subscribing is so cheap. The way we’re positioning it and the content that we have, it’ll be a no-brainer.

What’s your mission statement for the mag?
To give Australian gamers the respect they deserve by getting them access to the biggest and best world exclusives first, and to ensure that the local scene gets representation in the world’s number one gaming publication.

How do you see Game Informer as compared to your most obvious competitor, Hyper?
I am a big fan of Hyper: like many (if not all) journos in the local industry I had my ‘levelling-up’ period through the mag back in the ’90s and that affection remains. Game Informer is on another level, however. The US magazine gets the biggest and the best things first, even ahead of online. I have access to all that content, plus the opportunities that I generate locally as well. It’s powerful stuff, especially as we will be going on sale more-or-less alongside the US – we’re a concurrent publication, not an out-dated port, which I hope shows the level of respect we have for the local gamers. That said, Hyper has battled through plenty of challenges over the last two decades, and I am sure the competition will work to the benefit of both mags’ editorial.

Won’t you just be pimping EB preorders and used games?
Editorially we will not be pimping anything that we don’t think the locals will enjoy reading. I guess sometimes that may be a pre-order if it is stupid cool (like night vision goggles). But that’ll be it. I can’t see any reason to talk up used games at all: really Game Informer is all about the present and future.

And finally… isn’t print dead?
Not at all. The US magazine has 3.6 million subscribers, which is a pretty long way from dead. I’ve just spent two-and-a-half years running a games website and to be honest, I think the anarchy of the medium acts to undermine it. In general, good editorial falls flat, and crap editorial rakes in the hits and there’s too much pressure to deliver traffic on an hourly basis for a lot of sites: editorial quality is the first thing to buckle. I am really looking forward to focusing over the course of a month on one product and channelling all that is awesome into it. With the unmissable cover features that the lads over in the US consistently nail and our price point, I think we’ll be offering something that will more than compete with online. It’s certainly going to be a fun finding out!

Thanks Chris. I’m curious to hear from you: do you still buy games magazines? If so, which ones? And are you interested in Game Informer?

It seems that the vast majority of the industry professions in the video agree. Games journalism has definitely changed drastically over the past decade, though definitely not for the worse…unless of course you’re a big fan of magazines. I was actually discussing this with a friend this past weekend, how the internet hasn’t just given us more information, but a greater hunger for information that desperately needs to be sated, and sated relatively quickly. People just aren’t satisfied reading a story two months after the news hits anymore. That’s where websites like the one you are currently reading come in.

Having grown up plastering video game ads from magazines on my wall as a child and having to avoid slipping on a deep pile of said magazines every time I had to use the bathroom, I am a little bit nostalgic for the heyday of print. Printing out banner ads on my inkjet just isn’t the same, and the bathroom is not the best place for a laptop.

“Plans put in motion today for EGM to return on December 1…”, he posted on his Twitter account earlier today. Now, these are plans. Not a concrete, definitive announcement.

Also, we still don’t know what guise the mag will be back in! Surely there’ll still be a tangible, proper magazine forming the cornerstone of EGM’s output, but Harris’ previous comments on “fully transportable” content have us more interested in that than some bound pieces of paper.

[Steve Harris @ Twitter]

Publisher Future has teamed up with WoW developer Blizzard Entertainment for quarterly title World of Warcraft: The Magazine.

Available in English, French, German and Spanish, the publication is sold via subscription only through World of Warcraft Account Management or from the mag’s official site.

The magazine is available as a one or two-year subscription, pricing for one year is $US39.95, 34.95 EUR or 29.95 GBP depending on your region — two year subscription packages cost $US69.95 in the US, 61.25 EUR or 52.50 GBP.

“Future produces some of the most respected gaming magazines in the industry, and we’re pleased to be working closely with them to make World of Warcraft: The Magazine a true standout product,” says Blizzard COO Paul Sams. “Together, we look forward to offering World of Warcraft players a great mix of entertaining and insightful content in every issue.”

The 148-page first issue will cover the fifth anniversary of World of Warcraft.

Other Future publications include T3, Total Film, Digital Camera, Fast Car, Classic Rock, Guitar World, Official Xbox Magazine, Official Playstation Magazine, Nintendo Power, Maximum PC and MacLife.

These are from a piece called “Made in Myth”, and show how cats like Miyamoto and Yuji Naka have been pulling the wool over your eyes for years. Classic video games aren’t digitally composed in a studio; they’re lovingly hand-crafted in a workshop by sweaty, nerd pixies.

Made of Myth [Amusement]

Mario

One of Future’s three PlayStation-focused publications (along with the Official PlayStation Magazine and PSM3), PSW’s first issue went on sale in the UK all the way back in 2000, and with the closure already in effect the last issue is probably the one already on news stands.

Sad, but then, did a single publisher really need three PlayStation magazines?

Future closes PSW magazine [MCV]

“My concerns were risen when my son went out and bought himself a gaming magazine to read the reviews of the latest Xbox 360 games,” mayhem writes. “To my surprise the only thing that did was the last 4 pages of the magazine that contained major full page spreads of mobile sex games, videos and pictures.”

“…I turned to the front cover to see if there was a 18 rated sticker anywhere on the front of the magazine,” mayhem continues. “Nothing. Absolutely no indication that the magazine contained content unfit for young eyes.”

Mayhem’s eight-year-old daughter went to various UK book sellers to see how easy it would be to purchase game magazines—game magazines with adult ads in the back.

“My 8 year old daughter walked in on her own and when straight for the gaming section,” Mayhem writes. “On the lower shelf she picked out several magazines including Play (a Sony PlayStation 3 Magazine) and 360 (a Microsoft Xbox 360 magazine) both of which are published by Imagine Publishing. Neither of these titles had an 18 or 15 certificate on them.”

But in the back, there were adults ads, so Mayhem complained. After doing that, Mayhem and child headed to more small shops to buy more games with dirty ads in the back. “We found that at every shop we had gone to that she could easily walk in and buy literally any gaming magazine she liked,” Mayhem continues. (Of course she can! They’re not rated ages 18-years-old and up!)

“On one occasion even some with 18 certifications from a local news agent,” Mayhem writes. “I was amazed my 8 year old daughter can by pornography in this form.” Hey, we’re amazed you let her—all in the name of research.

Though, this “pornography” looks more like adverts for phone sex and adult mobile phone games and not actually pornography per se. Weekly British tabloids have more actual pornography in them! There are dodgy adult ads in telephone booths and, heck, even the phone book. It’s endless.

Sure, Imagine Publishing might want to re-examine how it generates ad revenue. It might not, and the ads it is running could very well be acceptable under UK law. If it is, the issue is not with the bookstores or the publisher even, but with the law. (And what about ads in other under 18 magazines? Were those checked as well?)

We do thank mayhem at Overclocke3D for creating a dialogue about this issue.

News :: Not much left to the Imagine’ation – Magazine publisher serves up porno to minors [Overclock3D.Net via GamePolitics]

Twelve-year-old Jake O’Donnell of Boston got an eyeful of side- and under-booby when Maxim showed up this past month, and mum Kathleen is—I gotta go with her on this—understandably a bit peeved.

Not that Maxim’s out-and-out porn, but it’s definitely for a readership that’s a bit older—note I didn’t say “more mature”—than a 12-year-old. It’s not just the boiyoiyoinggg photos, stuff about drinking, bad hookups and stupid stunts with painful endings, seriously. That’s not age appropriate.

Boston’s WBZ-TV smelled the big stinker and filed an investigative report on it. Basically, the news is—while subscribers could opt out and get a refund for the remainder of their EGM subs, that notice was accompanied by the first replacement issue of Maxim, meaning there was no way for a mum to head off her junior high-schooler’s encounter with his new subscription and a roll of Charmin. On top of that, although Mrs. O’Donnell wrote in to cancel the sub, the August 2009 copy—with Joanna Krupa vamping topless on the front—arrived right on time.

12-Year-Old Gets Maxim Mag, mum not Happy [The Escapist via Joystiq]

Sadly, the French magazine is available only in French (the cheek of them!). And we don’t do French. But preview pages of this month’s issue, the mag’s fifth, make us wish we did. Mostly because we’re suckers for shoeless pics of the perennially shoeless Keita Takehashi.

While we all wait for an English-language edition of the publication to launch, you can browse a few preview pages on the mag’s site at the link below.

[Amusement 5, via Offworld]

The proposition is, admittedly, shrewd – if you’re willing to pay $US60 for Madden, you can pay $US50 for Sports Illustrated and get both. Of course, you can read everything SI offers, for free, online, but if that’s your stance, you’re still paying 10 bones extra for the game and no hard copy. The only hang up is you will still be waiting for the game after the national release date of Aug. 14, as SI promises no games will be shipped before then.

You also get some DVD documentary about Madden himself, but my guess is it’s something ESPN has broadcast to a largely unemployed viewership on a Wednesday at 2 pm.

Sports Illustrated’s dabbled with games before, branding three titles for the Game Boy from 1994 to 2001, according to Mobygames. Its web site also features game reviews and gratuitous titillation, so it’s not like the National Review is hawking Donkey Kong all of a sudden. But it does show gamers’ increasing pull with traditional brands.

Special Offer from SI [site]