Next Generation Relaunches

[jeffool]

The former magazine Next Generation has officially relaunched (http://next-gen.biz/), only this time as a website. From their email notification:In the nineties, the games industry had Next Generation magazine. The magazine helped define an era of massive growth and unprecedented creativity in the games business. We believe that the coming of a new generation of consoles and the spread of new platforms, such as online and mobile, signify another such era.

Today, Future reintroduces you to Next Generation. Instilled with the editorial integrity of its predecessor, Next Generation is an online business daily news source designed to offer you unique insight into the rapidly changing world of games and the interactive entertainment industry.Next Generation was a great magazine, but was it lightning in a bottle? The right magazine with the right people at the right time? Or, as they have those people back, will they pull of such quality again? Time will tell. But until that time, I've subscribed to their RSS feed (http://www.next-gen.biz/index2.php?option=com_rss&feed=RSS2.0&no_html=1).

[Sion]

There are too many unknowns about this to get exited over. How many people will be back who were part of the mag? Can they keep the same quality with a site?

Ill bet it ends up just being a name, and nothing more. Mags have a particular charm compared to sites.

[johnperkins21]

I remember their old website back before IGN and Gamespot (I think IGN bought out their website a long ass time ago, but I can't remember that far back very well). This is a vast improvement visually, but only time will tell if it has the same quality in reporting. I loved that magazine and was completely dumbfounded by its going under.

[*Legion*]

I would pay to subscribe to such a site if it maintained the top level of quality of the magazine.

[Dracula-X]

Used to be one of my fav mags. Hope this works out...

[if76]

I remember Next Generation being awesome but I can't really remember any specifics. I definitely liked the formatting and the nice thick glossy pages kicked ass. I'm not sure how it plans to differentiate itself from gamespy, ign, gamespot, 1up, and worthplaying. I'd personally like to see a site with a focus on features and editorials rather than the same reviews and previews you can get from all the other sites out there.

[Sion]

The best game mag ever was ODCM

[Last of the Red Hot Mamas]

Wasn't a lot of Next Generation's material carried straight over from Edge? I seem to remember a lot of the previews and feature articles were, anyway.

[Zeal]

Oh my God. This is fucking great.

NEXT-GENERATION = best videogame authority ever. period.

Now just get GameFan back and we got a revival.

HELL YEAH!

[actusoul]

I read every issue and have them in several boxes in my garage. This was a QUALITY gaming magazine with mature analysis of the gaming industry in the 90's. I was truly dumbfounded when I received the notice that the next issue would be my last.

This is one site I would pay to read if they keep the same approach and live up to the name. I am crossing my fingers.

[Deadend]

Web site looks nice.

[maniac_of_noise]

I recall buying a couple of Next Generation magazines back in '98 and I wasn't that impressed. Ideally what they should really do is just make Edge widely available over here, as it is far superior.

[Sion]

GameFan was a horrible mag. They were far to zealous about 2D games that it was pretty sad. ECM was an ass.

[51|RandoM]

nextgen as a paper rag had great production values. It wasn't just another cheap zine with tons of ads, tons of screenshots, and very little verbiage.

That said, each issue seemed to be thematic(except for the roundup issues, etc.), which doesn't lead to comprehensive coverage of the industry itself.

Print is dead when it comes to magazines, as far as I'm concerned. There are so many digital devices that can provide the same content, in a better format, for less time/money(on my part).

[Lutheran]

I get pretty much all the print gaming magazines for free and most of them are lame for one reason or another. Next Gen was a great magazine.

[KDups]

I read every issue and have them in several boxes in my garage.

Heh, yeah, so do I.

If I remember correctly I believe the same company (Future perhaps) owned both Edge and Next Generation. Edge was basically Next-Gen in Europe, and vice versa. There was a fair amount of content crossover, I don't think it was as one-sided as you guys are saying.

They say they got Tom Chick writing for them again, which is awesome news in itself. Good stuff.

[Kieron Gillen]

If I remember correctly I believe the same company (Future perhaps) owned both Edge and Next Generation. Edge was basically Next-Gen in Europe, and vice versa. There was a fair amount of content crossover, I don't think it was as one-sided as you guys are saying.

Maybe, but they were still wildly different magazines. Next Gen, no matter what its considerable qualities, was a lot closer to the standard videogames magazine template than Edge has ever wandered. In the same way Gamer US and UK are radically different magazines from the same starting concept ("A magazine about PC Games"), Next Gen and Edge were too ("A multiformat forward-looking videogames magazine").

Still - good to see it back, in whatever form.

KG

[Furious Wang]

Yeah! Next Gen is solid shit. Glad to see they're back. They tell it like it is and its been a shame not having them around the past 6-7 years of so.

[Praetor-Vong]

Great site. Good structure and sectionalizing. Hopefully it'll be as enjoyable as the print version was.

[score]

Is that Kieron Gillen of the PC Gamer UK fame?

[mister_slim]

Site design isn't particularly good. Hope they pull it off though.