Launch Editor - James Ashton
Company - Future Publishing
Initial Price - £5.99
Total Issues - 61 + 1
The official magazine was easily the most expensive, yet was the only magazine to come with a DVD that contained a number of playable demos. Additionally the discs also contained a number of videos including interviews with later versions also containing; DLC, game-saves and player created levels. As for the magazine it was fairly fleshed out with a nice design overall. Review scores are also more consistently on point and feel a little more in depth than other magazines. Interestingly the magazine also ran alongside the Official Xbox 360 Magazine for a short period of around 12 months right up until Microsoft pulled the plug on the original Xbox. In the end this is probably the best magazine of the bunch.
Launch Editor - Nick Roberts
nitial Price - £3.20
Company - Paragon Publishing
Issues - December 2001 - Christmas 2005
Total Issues - 53
nitial Price - £3.20
Back in the day this was my magazine of choice and I can see why as it's easily the most aesthetically pleasing of the bunch. It just has a bold, distinctive style that's coherent throughout the magazine. When it came to goodies Issue 3 came with a VHS, but usually the magazine came with a nice little booklet then later a CD. Many of the booklets were just tips and cheats, walkthroughs for two specific games or a little mini collection of reviews from their previous issues. The magazine featured some nice extensive interviews with a nice range of western and Japanese developers. With it not being an unofficial magazine the humour can come across as very poor taste by today's standards. The review scores were a bit iffy too with Crazy Taxi 3 and Elder Scrolls Morrowind scoring a 7 but Aggressive Inline earning a 9? Wha? One thing which the magazine did well was the second opinion section where you could get an alternative opinion from one of the team. Overall a pretty good magazine.
Launch Editor - Pat Garratt
Initial Price - £3.99
Issues - April 2003 - Febuary 2012 (As 'Xbox World 360')
Total Issues - 31
Xbox World arrived a year later from it's competition and didn't last long before being acquired by Future Publishing sometime in late 2003. Xbox World was also responsible for the infamous Driv3r fiasco which saw the magazine give the buggy game a 9 out of 10 so it could be one of the first magazines to review the game. Following on from the debacle the magazines reputation along with it's sister mag PSM2 were tarnished. When reading their reviews you have to take them all with a truck load of salt, who knows what other shady deals went on? The magazine featured lots of sleazy babe adverts all throughout the magazine (as apposed to just the last page) with the news topics usually revolving around women or sex. Their features section weren't that particularly good either with stuff such as 'best of British' and 'Special Report on...' which were just glorified reviews or retrospectives. Easily the worst magazine of the bunch.
Launch Editor - Mark Donald
Initial Price - £2.99
Company - Future Publishing
Issues - March 2002 to April 2005
Total Issues - 40
Being the cheapest of the bunch, it seemed like Future Publishing wanted this magazine to be the budget version next to the official premium magazine. On the 30th of January the magazine changed it's name to 'Xbox Gamer' with a new £50,000 promotion in order to boost sales. When the brand changed the magazine got a new price of £3.49 and took to modelling attractive women on their front covers to entice people to buy their magazine. However this didn't last as they soon ditched this sometime in late 2003. It seems like this was an experimental magazine for Future as evident by the number of redesigns and advertisement shifts. The magazine came with a CD with a number of promotional videos featuring some upcoming trailers for latest games. Visually the magazine is the most basic out of the bunch which is probably indicative of its price. Reviews seem pretty spot on judging from the first issue. Unfortunately I say this because this magazine is damn near impossible to find, I can't even remember seeing it back in the day either. So based on the only documented PDF version of the mag, It's alright.
- http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/revamp-for-xgamer/
- http://www.eurogamer.net/forum/thread/14548
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