As some of you may remember, I published a test issue of a free magazine called Re-Play over three years ago to coincide with a yearly videogames consumer event called Eurogamer Expo. Since the test issue's launch, I've had the honour of dealing with some spectacular highs, as well as some distressingly pitiful lows. Par for the course, I'm not really sure as to why it's taken this long for me to acknowledge that something was amiss, although part of me was also hopeful that maybe my own expectations for the magazine (together with market conditions) would change.
I'm not really sure as to why Re-Play never took off, although I do have some ideas as to why it failed. To be fair, the test issue did generate a lot of pre-orders (25,000 from 40 independent retailers across UK – including Grainger Games), and also secured a distribution deal with the same company that deals with freemium titles (such as Metro, Shortlist and City AM). This obviously proved to me that sufficient demand, and a large enough market, did exist for the magazine. Re-Play even managed to secure valuable column inch space in the respectable weekly trade magazine MCV.
So why did Re-Play fail to materialise as a viable mainstream concern, even though the magazine...