And then there were two

I hate for this to be the first post of the new year, but it appears we've gotten off to a bad start. The Mighty Triumvirate of Gaming Publications (sure it's a thing, go look it up) has lost its tallest pillar. Yesterday, the sale 1up and its related sites by Ziff-Davis Media was made official. The sites are now owned by UGO (yeah, I had to look that one up too- its been around for 11 years though) and parent company the Hearst Corporation which is apparently a huge media conglomerate (Why haven't I heard of any of these?). Favorite staff members were axed. Podcasts were shut down. Fans were in an uproar. Then, came this:

"After a comprehensive process, this morning we completed a deal with Hearst Interactive, the owner and operator of UGO Entertainment. 1UP.com, MyCheats.com, Gamevideos.com, and Gametab.com will now all be part of the UGO Entertainment business. Many of our employees will travel with this business and become part of the UGO team.

With this transaction happening, we have also made the decision to discontinue publication of EGM. The January 2009 issue will be the final issue of the publication. With demand for print continuing to decline amongst both advertisers and readers and the content being produced by 1UP no longer available for use in the publication, it simply did not make sense for us to move forward with this business any longer."

That's apparently part of a leaked e-mail sent by the CEO of Ziff-Davis. Yup, that means that the longest running multi-platform gaming magazine is now gone forever. This is indeed a sad day for the gaming community. It was a good move, in my opinion, if the objective was to put people off and drive away fans. In that case, good job guys! For the rest of us, that leaves a massive gap in the US gaming magazine market. Only GameInformer and Gamepro remain. Although, I read that there is actually a rather obscure third magazine called Play. You might want to check that out. Who knows, it could be good.

I remember back in the day when I used to read GameNow. They were discontinued a couple of years back because they thought there were too many gaming magazines and they were lost in the shuffle. I find it ironic that only a few years later there are only two.

In a related story, subscriptions to GameInformer have increased by 150%.