It looks like another gaming magazine will bite the dust. Ars Technica is reporting that a source at Future Publishing has informed them that Nintendo Power will be shutting down in the near future.
To most of us, Nintendo Power is a reminder of the good old days when there was no Internet to give us information of upcoming games, reviews, or walkthroughs. Everything came from word of mouth or magazines like Nintendo Power.
This news comes at a time when print publications everywhere are seeing a decline in subscriptions. Long-running gaming magazine GamePro also had to close its doors at the end of last year.
According to Ars Technica’s source, Nintendo was uninterested (and were hard to work with through out) in making changes Future Publishing deemed necessary for the magazine to succeed in the digital age. Ultimately, Nintendo decided not to renew its contract. Nintendo doesn’t seem interested in taking over the magazine responsibilities either. It’s too bad the two companies couldn’t work something out and that Nintendo was unwilling to make the suggested digital changes. In my opinion, it’s what is keeping magazines like Game Informer going.
There has been no official word from Nintendo or Future Publishing representatives, but Nintendo Power senior editor, Chris Hoffman, did take to Twitter to say he was, “sad to see [Nintendo Power] go.” The tweet was deleted shortly after though.
Nintendo Power has had a long history, with its first issue published in the summer of 1988. It went from being a marketing-style magazine to becoming a full blown news and review publication in 2007 when Future Publishing took over. Currently, the magazine has a monthly readership of 475,000, according to Future Publishing.
It will be a sad day when that final issue arrives in the mail as another gaming magazine closes its doors. Nintendo Power writer, Phil Theobald assures us on Twitter (though his tweet also vanished mysteriously) that they have “something pretty sweet planned for the final issue.” Hopefully they’ll be going out with a bang.
