DavidDayton said:
Maybe I'm just jaded, but I'd never think to compare two magazines published by the same company -- I'd assume that they are, for all intents and purposes, nearly identical, REGARDLESS of what they claim. The review text was different, you say? Were the scores and final outcome the same?
Even if the same person writes all four reviews, I don't see the problem, really. From my point of view, magazines published by the same company are all branches of that same company, and I really don't expect each to be "exclusive" of the others. Now, if the top four competing magazines all had the same review by the same guy, I'd be a bit annoyed...
The conclusions were roughly the same.
Figures from abc.org.uk on circulation for game magazines. Bolded are magazines owned by Future Publishing or one of its subsiduaries.
Official Playstation 2 (Future Publishing Ltd) 177,450
Official UK Xbox Magazine (FXM International Ltd) 83,549
PC Gamer (Future Publishing Ltd) 57,748
Playstation World (FXM International Ltd) 56,834
Games Master (Future Publishing Ltd) 55,254
Play (Highbury-Entertainment Ltd) 54,109
Nintendo Official Magazine (EMAP Active Limited) 46,108
PSM 2 (Future Publishing Ltd) 45,147
PC Zone (Dennis Publishing Limited) 41,073
XBM (Highbury-Entertainment Ltd) 29,559
Cube (Highbury-Entertainment Ltd) 29,172
Powerstation (Highbury-Entertainment Ltd) 27,566
Edge (Future Publishing Ltd) 27,464
NGC Magazine (Future Publishing Ltd) 23,804
XBox World (Future Publishing Ltd) 23,753
Playstation 2 Special Edition (Future Publishing Ltd) 22,677
XBox Gamer (FXM International Ltd) 20,037
Games TM (Highbury-Entertainment Ltd) 20,009
P2 (Highbury-Entertainment Ltd) 18,929
Official XBox - Special Edition Series (FXM International Ltd) 13,273
Cheatzone (Future Publishing Ltd) 7,205
Consider all FP periodicals to be the same and there isn't much of a print magazine market here.