Further decline for games mags in 2011 ABCs

Circulation figures for the UK’s specialist games mags fell across the board, according to the latest figures from audit bureau ABC.

Future’s NGamer – recently rebranded to Nintendo Gamer – and Imagine’s Play suffered the worst declines, losing more than a quarter of their readership compared to the same period last year. Official Xbox 360 Magazine and PC Gamer saw only minor dips, dropping by around 2,000 readers each.

Interestingly, the Moshi Monsters magazine that launched last year outperformed all games magazines with a circulation of over 143,000.

These figures do not include digital editions made available by Apple’s Newsstand and other online marketplaces. In fact, when you take these into account Edge’s circulation comes in at 26,626, showing only a five per cent drop rather than 12.

Edge was actually the 15th highest-selling magazine across all digital products, with a circulation of 2,183. Three other magazines made it into the Top 72 digital magazines ABC listed: PSM 3 with 407 readers, PC gamer with 379 and Xbox World 360 with 244.

However, it is important to note that ABC’s digital figures are a monthly average taken for the whole of 2011 – Future’s magazines have only been on the Apple store for three months, so their monthly readerships are actually higher than listed.

Here are the December 2011 ABCs in full, as compared to December 2010:

MICROSOFT

Official Xbox 360 Magazine (Future) – 58,610 (-3.7%, 2010: 60,859)
Xbox World 360 (Future) – 20,738 (-10.1%, 2010: 23,061)
X360 (Imagine) – 20,695 (-14.1%, 2010: 24,090)
360 Gamer (Uncooked) – 13,124 (-14.4%, 2010: 15,325)
360 (Imagine) – 9,335 (-16.5%, 2010: 11,183)

SONY
Official PlayStation Magazine (Future) – 38,262 (-16.8%, 2010: 46,012)
PSM 3 (Future) – 16,815 (-18.5, 2010: 20,640)
Play (Imagine) – 15,693 (-27.8%, 2010: 21,735)

NINTENDO
Official Nintendo Magazine (Future) – 36,197 (-19.6%, 2010: 45,015)
N Gamer (Future) – 7,745 (-26.9%, 2010: 10,589)

OTHER
Edge (Future) – 24,443 (-12.9%, 2010: 28,051)
PC Gamer (Future) – 23,652 (-5.5%, 2010: 25,019)
Games Master (Future) –23,313 (-16.7%, 2010: 28,003)
Games TM (Imagine) – 15,066 (-16.4%, 18,025)