You may recall that last week I posted a piece about the imminent closure of Imagine Publishing’s Nintendo mag NRevolution. You may also have noticed that the post has since been removed. I took it down at the respectful request of Imagine’s MD Damian Butt, who wished to make an official statement about the closure, which he promised to forward to me at the appropriate time. That appropriate time is now.
“The decision to suspend N•Revolution has been taken because it has become increasingly obvious that Nintendo’s strategy for Wii and DS is no longer in line with Imagine Publishing’s target readership, and has moved increasingly away from the hardcore gaming community that is our specialty,” Butt explains.
“With many new launches and especially acquisitions coming to fruition, we believe the resources and manpower are better spent in other markets where advertising revenue and PR support are stronger and sustained,” he continues. “Imagine will continue to drive purchases of Nintendo software with games™, Retro Gamer and our new multiformat videogames website, NowGamer.com, and we hope to work closely with Nintendo in the future on those magazines.”
It’s clear that NRevolution was no longer a decent fit for the company’s portfolio, with Butt further explaining to me that “[Imagine] just felt that the Nintendo market is getting younger and younger and Imagine specialises in magazines for males aged 24-35″. It’ll be interesting to see if Nintendo’s shift towards a more youthful and more mass-market audience will impact upon other publications or sites, but for now it seems NRevolution is the first major casualty of the casual. It shall be missed.
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