OK, I mean punt as in passing around from person to person, which is probably a bizarre English monstrosity that nobody will understand, but GameDaily.biz has an excellent 'Media Coverage' round-up article which touches on video game mags and exactly how many people read them.

As Kyle Orland notes: "The Audit Bureau of Circulation does a pretty good job of estimating how many actual copies of a magazine get out into the market each month. But that's only part of the story. To get the full measure of a magazine's impact, you have to look at how many people read the magazine by borrowing it from a friend, browsing it in a waiting room, picking it up from a gym's magazine rack, and so forth. MediaMark Research's Survey of the American Consumer uses in-home interviews to generate an estimate of that pass-around rate, and the results show just how little circulation matters to a game magazine's actual reach."

How so? Well: "Game Informer's massive 315 percent lead over its nearest competitor in circulation falls to a paltry 18 percent lead when you look at readership. The magazine bringing up second place changes too -- while Electronic Gaming Monthly is the second most-circulated game mag, in readership it falls to fourth behind the Official Xbox Magazine and GamePro (a fact the latter magazine was quick to trumpet)." Lots more interesting stats (and some other fun story round-ups) if you click through, guv'nor. [Thanks for pic, Jason Scott!]