Famitsu tops: Most read gaming magazine in Japan
The Japanese Magazine Publishers Association has released numbers for videogame magazines from its Magazine Data 2010 book.
Covering data for the period between October 1, 2008 and September 30, 2009, Famitsu was the clear winner with 500,000 readers picking up the weekly mag.
Here's the list in order of readers:
- Weekly Famitsu: 500,000
- Dengeki Nintendo DS: 160,000
- Famitsu PSP+PS3: 150,000
- Dengeki PlayStation: 131,061
- Arcadia: 120,000
- Dengeki G's Magazine: 120,000
- Famitsu Xbox 360: 120,000
- Famitsu DS+Wii: 100,417
- Dengeki Maoh: 100,000
- Famitsu Wave DVD: 100,000
- Dengeki Girl's Style: 80,000
- Dengeki Hime: 80,000
- Famitsu Connect! On: 80,000
- B's-LOG: 50,000
- Game Japan: 30,000
It was not mentioned whether these figures for Japan were good or bad, but you also have to take into consideration that Japanese magazines are not usually sold on a month-per-month basis, but are instead sold at newsstands.
When comparing these figures to other magazines, Kotaku noted that GameStop owned Game Informer has 3.5 million readers, while UK print magazine EDGE had a circulation of approximately 28,000 as of 2008.
Everyone knows that print is in trouble. That's all print chats about - which the end of would be a massive loss. However, its good to know that folks are still subscribing to and reading print magazines, and some new offerings are even being created.
World of Warcraft has it's own mag now, and EGM is expected to re-launch with its first issue in March.