Computer game magazine

This holiday season is the hottest ever for the video-game business, thanks to the fight between Sony's Playstation2 and Microsoft's Xbox. These are boomtimes for the magazines that cover games as well. The biggest, which covers every kind of game, is the Vanity Fair-thick Electronic Gaming Monthly by Ziff Davis Media. But the real action in publishing also revolves around Sony and Microsoft - Ziff and Future Network each paid big, undisclosed bucks to publish the official Playstation and Xbox books, respectively - and then they started unofficial magazines to compete with each other. But being the chosen one has a ton of advantages, including the exclusive use of the manufacturer's name on the cover. Why else would Future call its Playstation2 book the unwieldy PSM: 100% Independent Playstation 2 Magazine?

Ziff Davis Media Inc.

Official U.S. Playstation Magazine (monthly) Ad pages through November: 890.8 Subs: 137,300 (34.8%) Single: 165,350 (-1.9%) Total: 299,586 (-20.2%) Xbox Nation (quarterly) Ad pages through November: 195 Distribution: 200,000 copies on newsstands

New advertisers: Bawls Guarana Energy Drink The best part of having Sony's blessing is the DVD of game demos that Ziff can stuff in every copy, giving the magazine a cover price of $8.99. Media buyers just love that. "It's more appealing than just pure circulation," says Bill Harvey, a senior print negotiator at Initiative Media. Package sales with Ziff flagship EGM also helps; pages were up 15 percent in 2002, even though circulation dropped a full 20 percent. Xbox Nation is just a quarterly toe hold in that market; Ziff executives are reluctant to invest more until Microsoft can prove that the console can hang with the much better-selling Playstation2.

On the competition: "I'm better off not having the official Xbox magazine... If I had it, I would had to really exert myself. If the Xbox takes off, [Future] could be in the catbird seat, but right now, I'm delighted." - Dale Strang, senior vice president.

Future Network USA

PSM 100% Independent Playsation 2 Mag. Ad pages through November: 820 Subs: 288,385 (17.1%) Single: 53,904 (-3.7%) Total: 342,289 (13.2%) Official Xbox Magazine Ad pages through November: 605 Rate base: 250,000 (ABC audit pending)

New advertisers: Bockbuster, Columbia House Future owns the Xbox market with its official magazine, but its rivals whisper that it paid far too much for the privilege. Maybe, but the company has thrown its full weight behind it, building a magazine that in one year is bigger than Ziff's official Playstation one, with a newly upped rate base of 325,000 (the ABC audit is pending). It packs a DVD of its own, too. Its unofficial Playstation2 magazine, PSM, is also scooping up readers - total circ in the first half of the year rose 13.2 percent, eclipsing Ziff's official title for the first time with 342,000 readers.

On the competition: "We think single-platform magazines can ultimately outsell [Ziff's EGM]. Official Playstation could be selling as many as 600,000 or 700,000 copies. If it did, it would undermine their most profitable business." - Simon Whitcomb, group publishing director.