May Nintendo Force Be with Gamers?

I always figured that in the modern media market, Nintendo Power magazine had two strikes against it:

1. Magazines are dying anyway. By the time hints, tips and tricks can be sent out to the world in print, they’ll have already been online a while.

2. Modern gamers tend to have more than one system, thus a brand-monopoly publication is too much of a narrowcast.

Indeed, the magazine did die. But now a group of intrepid Nintendo journalists are going to try again.

“Nintendo Force is going to be, in every way possible, a spiritual successor to the great publication we’ve lost,” says new editor Lucas M. Thomas, and I’m sure he means well. But allow me to speak as somebody who has worked for more than his share of now-defunct publications – if sheer love of the subject matter and the talent to write about it well were enough, there’d be a whole lot fewer unemployed journalists and critics right now; you need capital behind it, and I doubt Nintendo itself wants to fund an outside start-up. Nintendo Force is supposedly going to be an online and print publication, and I can definitely see the online part working. But print? I still don’t see it clearing the two hurdles I mentioned above.

(Bonus pointer: when mentioning your own Facebook and Twitter on a website, making them clickable links would be a good idea, especially if you want to convince me you’re a savvy businessperson.)

But maybe I’m wrong; it’d be nice if these folks did succeed at their passions, just as it would be for all of us to do similarly. What say you gamers?

h/t SlyDante via Destructoid