Official feedback thread for issue 19

[DonkeySpank]

I have to say I have this and it's superb. You won't be disappointed.

[Dell_Zincht]

Only just got my copy today (shame on me!) and have to say it's a very lovely read. I especially love the Dizzy article as the Dizzy franchise was one of my favourites. Please don't say however that the coverdisc is gone forever as there were some good ones. £4.99 is still a tad pricey like, i'm a student and don't have that much money

[LeeT]

Only just got my copy today (shame on me!) and have to say it's a very lovely read. I especially love the Dizzy article as the Dizzy franchise was one of my favourites. Please don't say however that the coverdisc is gone forever as there were some good ones. £4.99 is still a tad pricey like, i'm a student and don't have that much money

For a niche publication with very few adverts, I think £4.99 is quite fair. Besides everyone knows students get loans dead easy, so go and get yer overdraft extended!

[CraigGrannell]

Considering the tiny number of articles and the page count, I reckon £4.99 is a pretty good price compared to other mags on the shelves.

[Rikki]

Love the new mag! Looks and reads a lot better than the previous ones with the other publisher. The cover photography is just brilliant, I never really liked the way that the old one "had" to look old with pixelated 4 colour layouts and such like. Now you've fused modern design skills with retro content for a perfect balance. I actually read this one cover to cover!

Good job ditching the expensive cover mount too, I never bothered even trying to load any of the previous ones and it would have obscured the lovely cover shot!

R.

[Laser]

I think the price is okay.

Rummaging around on the floor here I find a copy of PC Advisor. It has about twice as many pages (and half the content!), not as colourful, and about one page in four is an advert. It's the same price: £4.99. Considering that's a mainstream mag it shows RG isn't unreasonable.

I think I once said on the old RG forum: There were some good discs. Beneath a Steel Sky for example. It would be a shame if we never saw another disc, but I agree there's no point in doing them just for the hell of it.

[Dudley]

I think the price is okay.

Rummaging around on the floor here I find a copy of PC Advisor. It has about twice as many pages (and half the content!), not as colourful, and about one page in four is an advert. It's the same price: £4.99. Considering that's a mainstream mag it shows RG isn't unreasonable.

I think I once said on the old RG forum: There were some good discs. Beneath a Steel Sky for example. It would be a shame if we never saw another disc, but I agree there's no point in doing them just for the hell of it.

To be fair, Beneath a steel sky is free and legal to download anyway.

As for the PC Advisor comparison (and the Imagine boys may be able to help here), the rubrick I was always told was that a page of advertising pays for 3 pages of editorial without impact on the cover price.

[Rikki]

I think the price is okay.

Rummaging around on the floor here I find a copy of PC Advisor. It has about twice as many pages (and half the content!), not as colourful, and about one page in four is an advert. It's the same price: £4.99. Considering that's a mainstream mag it shows RG isn't unreasonable.

I think I once said on the old RG forum: There were some good discs. Beneath a Steel Sky for example. It would be a shame if we never saw another disc, but I agree there's no point in doing them just for the hell of it.

To be fair, Beneath a steel sky is free and legal to download anyway.

As for the PC Advisor comparison (and the Imagine boys may be able to help here), the rubrick I was always told was that a page of advertising pays for 3 pages of editorial without impact on the cover price.

Bit of a sweeping statement with some truth but its all dependant on a million variables.

Circulation / readership = potential clients for advertisers = page worth to advertisers - staff costs (sales, design, production, writers, photographers, researchers) - distro costs etc etc etc

For instance in my game (car magazines) the big daddy Max Power can command many thousands per page for advertising due to a circulation of 150,000+ but a smaller, niche title like FastFord might only charge £500 a page.

Its true about cover price tho, once you take into consideration the retailers cut, the distro cut out of say £5 the mag itself could easily only generate £1 for the publishing house per copy. The dosh is made from advertising revenue.

R.

[savva0122]

I would say the price is more than fair. Can get a bit pricey if you decide to subscribe etc but hey its only a pint of beer every other week! RG is worth that sacrifice!

I'd also prefer not to have the CD back, unless there is something pretty special (like the Amiga Forever and ROMs back in the old RG)

But its all good stuff thanks again for breathing new life into rRG

[lemon-rev]

I agree with some of this stuff about not having a cd cover but would like to put a simple question possibly in issue 20 for readers out there how many of them dont have internet access i know over there in the US or UK and other parts of the world the internet is almost commen place, that besides the point internet here in australia is just spawned off the ground and is still verry verry costly to the pocket of most pplz down here if i where living by my self i would not be even able to consider such a luxury cause of the price of living and price of the internet. Please take others into consideration when replying to posts about how things go. Thanks OUT

[Rikki]

I agree with some of this stuff about not having a cd cover but would like to put a simple question possibly in issue 20 for readers out there how many of them dont have internet access i know over there in the US or UK and other parts of the world the internet is almost commen place, that besides the point internet here in australia is just spawned off the ground and is still verry verry costly to the pocket of most pplz down here if i where living by my self i would not be even able to consider such a luxury cause of the price of living and price of the internet. Please take others into consideration when replying to posts about how things go. Thanks OUT

I didnt know RG was on sale anywhere bar the UK (my mistake there) but most of the planet is now connected up to the internet and a good percentage have broadband. More so people who are into the retro scene as they are generally more tech savy. I know I was an early adopted of ADSL here in the UK in 1999/2000 myself.

R.

[chinnyhill10]

Only just got my copy today (shame on me!) and have to say it's a very lovely read. I especially love the Dizzy article as the Dizzy franchise was one of my favourites. Please don't say however that the coverdisc is gone forever as there were some good ones. £4.99 is still a tad pricey like, i'm a student and don't have that much money

£4.99 a lot of money? Get a job!

Students eh? In my day we buckled down, worked hard and still had money for a pie, a pint, and a copy of Amiga Format!

[Dudley]

Students eh? In my day we buckled down, worked hard and still had money for a pie, a pint, and a copy of Amiga Format!

Which if I'm not very much mistake cost £4.99 for most of it's run anyway.

and £4.99 back then was a lot of money!

[lemon-rev]

RIKKI
I didnt know RG was on sale anywhere bar the UK (my mistake there) but most of the planet is now connected up to the internet and a good percentage have broadband. More so people who are into the retro scene as they are generally more tech savy. I know I was an early adopted of ADSL here in the UK in 1999/2000 myself.

ADSL what are u talking about adopted does that mean your now paying for this your self if so i had mine before yours but that was after i moved out of home, doesnt matter anyway what i was trying to say was it depends on where you are and how expensive your internet bill is at the end of the month that counts and genrally for a small dial up you could be paying up to about 30$ aus thats about 45-50$ US tell me if this is kinda out of pocket for most pplz ?.

[CraigGrannell]

The problem with a cover disc (and this is not unique to Retro Gamer in any way) is that it needs to be justified each and every month by filling it up. The thing is, 650MB is a lot of space in the retro world (more so than, say, for modern PC and Mac games), and while games likely wouldn't run out, they would get increasingly scarce (and the links between what's on the disc and 'retro' would become increasingly tenuous); also, CDs eat up resources on the mag itself—some of the mags I work on have a dedicated CD editor. While I doubt Retro Gamer mk. II would have to go that far, it'd still require someone to work on the CD, thereby stopping them from working on the mag.

From my point of view, I was very excited when Darran said the CD was dead, because that meant all of the resources were going into the mag itself, just like in the old days before people started looking at "what's on the covermount" prior to even checking out what's in the magazine.