I know that many IMG readers don’t believe this, but when Apple gets bad press, all Apple related industries take a beating. In the case of IMG, we notice a direct correlation between bad press and new subscriptions. There’s just no two ways about it. Sales can be rolling along steadily for months, then Time Magazine prints an ‘Apple is Dead’ article and whammo! Our phones resonate with the sounds of silence. I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t concerned for the Mac and the industries the existence of the Mac feeds, but I don’t think anything is anywhere as near to death as the press would have you believe.
Sure, times are bad, Apple can’t make enough money for Steve Jobs’ kid to ride the bus home from school, and the market share continues to spiral downward toward the low single digits. However, I think despite all this bad karma, the Mac will survive, just maybe not in the same form that we’ve known it to be in the past decade. Despite what you hear, major Mac software developers are not all bowing out, far from it. On the gaming front, I can tell you that there are major players that are still seriously looking at the Mac market, and they are beginning to see the light. Although I cannot divulge what I know, there’s a chance (although written in stone) that a major game company might jump in and supply Mac users with some serious kick-ass sports games.
News like this shows that there are still plenty of people out there that can think rationally and still see the value in the huge installed base of Mac users, which reached a critical mass long ago. If the product is solid, it will sell. As far as IMG goes, we’re fine, but we’ve noticed a slight trend in game development for the Mac, which brings me to my next point......
Content?
As you’ve probably noticed, IMG is not being released every 5 weeks as we had hoped earlier this year. We are struggling for content, and it has become impossible to ship an issue every 5 weeks.
Shrinking Games
The number of Mac games has decreased, there’s just no two ways about it. 1997 was, frankly, brutal in terms of getting enough games to review to meet what IMG guidelines need as a ‘minimum’ for each issue. This is the primary reason why issues get pushed out past 5 weeks, indeed, the IMG staff have had many heated discussions about how to deal with this situation. Basically, there’s four ways we can handle it.
1. Keep the issues coming every 5 weeks no matter what, and let them shrink or grow with the Mac gaming industry. This is certainly a viable alternative, but I personally wonder how our readers will like seeing an issue with only 5 reviews in it.
2. Put out the issues only when there’s enough material to justify them, and fall behind as a result.
3. Fill the issues with different content. More PC game reviews, more educational content, etc.
4. Move to an 8 issue/year format and keep the magazine robust.
What’s the answer? I’ll be darned if I know. When the 40 or so IMG writers were polled on this issue it came in about 60/40 in favor of moving to an 8 issue/year format. Before you panic, just remember that NO decision has been made, and IMG is committed to continuing to produce 10 issues/year as long as it’s feasible. Again, I want to stress that IMG as a business is very successful, and always has been (thanks to you), and it’s not the magazine that’s ailing, but the whole Mac industry. At any rate, we’ll be here for a long time, Apple or no Apple.
We'll let you know in the coming months what we decide to do. The most likely scenario is that we will go to an 8 issue format in 1998. To make up for this, we're probably going to reduce the price of the magazine from $59 to $39 permanently.
I'd welcome any comments or questions you might have. You can reach me at bart@imgmagazine.com.
