Games for Windows magazine in UK stops, moves online

Unfortunately, it looks like the realities of the marketplace has caught up with Games for Windows magazine: the print magazine will be shutting down, although the staff will continue writing for the 1UP Network, and the Sims 3 issue will be its last in print.
Jeff Green seems cautiously optimistic about the move to online-onlyreporting. "So, yeah. This is tough. This sucks. I'm not going topretend to be ina good mood. But the editors are still here. You're not rid of us yet.One era has ended. Another one is beginning," he wrote on his blog.The good news is the entire editorial staff will remain to write aboutPC games on 1UP, although they will be losing their art team, MichaelJennings and Rosemary Pinkham. "There is no positive spin to put onsuch a loss. I wouldn't daredo it. I am going to miss the two of them dearly, and wish them nothingbut the best," Green wrote. "They both deserve better than a day liketoday."
You can read more about the death of the magazine on Simon Cox's blog—he'sthe VP of content for 1UP. He begins his post by talking about theChapter 11 bankruptcy of Ziff-Davis Media and the restructuring of itsproperties properties... before telling us the mothballing of Games of Windowsmagazine has nothing to do with "the Chapter 11 stuff." He writes that"both the eyeballs of PC gamers, and the essential advertising dollarsneeded to sustain a PC gaming magazine are moving online at an alarmingpace. Much faster, it seems, than in the console world."
It's sad to see Games for Windows magazine go, and Ialways did enjoy reading each issue. It's nice to know the editorialstaff will be still be around, and more competition for solid reportingof PC games is unquestionably a good thing.

Count 'em down but hardly out, as Games For Windows magazine (nee Computer Gaming World for 27 years) goes online-only in a transition just announced following publisher Ziff Davis's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in early March.
1UP's VP of content Simon Cox says "the announcement today that weare closing the print publication Games For Windows: The OfficialMagazine has nothing to do with the Chapter 11 stuff" on his blog.Instead, the company's citing the movement of readers away from printto online news sources. The final issue (April/May, pictured above) ison newsstands now.
You might remember the atypically hard-hitting and well-written Computer Games Magazine closing shop around this time last year.When that magazine folded -- allegedly due to lawsuit damages incurredby publisher TheGlobe.com that had nothing to do with the otherwiseprofitable magazine -- a few of its writers hopped over to GFW and madea great magazine even greater. With GFW The Print Magazine now history,that means PC game print aficionados are -- as far as mainstreamnewsstand availability's concerned -- pretty much down to Future's PC Gamer or bust.
"The end of an era, but the start of a new one," reads the subhead of this note from 1UP's Sam Kennedy.
Here's hoping it's an epoch, guys.
(Check out GFW editor Jeff Green's blog for the straight-no-chaser version of the story.)