That's really bad news Kevin, but at least you tried. Best of luck with whatever you try next.

That is sad. I just discovered this magazine last week and enjoyed it.

Wow, sorry to hear it, dude. I feel exactly the same way. I've always wanted to create a top-drawer game magazine (like GameFan or NextGen), thinking it would be a completely awesome job. But all the points you make are perfectly reasonable.
I do all of my reading (game- and news- related) online, too. It's a sad day to lose another great mag.

Wow, what a rant. Perhaps your unfortunate experience with PiQ has influenced your views. Remember all of those dot coms that failed, and still fail? In any industry strong well funded businesses with a plan prevail. Magazines are launched every year, some die some live profitably.

PiQ was doomed from the beginning not because it was a bad mag but because it was presented as a replacement to Newtype USA. Launch PiQ on it's own and it may have lived longer.

Print is not dead, all media is just going through a transition as every industry does as technology progresses

I do have to agree with Kevin, though, that the only possible game magazine launch I can see in today's market is something that's heavily DIY or hacking-based.

Or something that'd bundled with a popular and ongoing game, actually - a World Of Warcraft official mag wouldn't be too crazy.

Sorry to hear about that, but uhh... has information about refunds been sent out, because I haven't gotten it yet...

i have to agree with Alexander I mean this PiQ magazine was supposed to make up for the people who had Newtype USA and then just rollover the money towards Piq but what about my left over money that hasnt been used yet?

That's an absolute shame... We didn't even get a chance to sample it and it sure looked amazing... Oh well... Perhaps you could come up with a DVD sporting the first issues and some finished but unpublished content.. I'd buy that...

Eh, you're being diplomatic. I still think the only reasons PiQ folded were: 1) an ad rep who had no interest in working for us, and 2) the death of ADV. With those things corrected we would've survived.

As someone who hasn’t purchased a magazine in years, I suppose in a small way I am partially responsible for print media’s current state of doom and self-loathing. I still read many of the gaming mags I receive for free through various offers but none of them, as has been pointed out, offer anything different than what can be obtained freely and in more detail online.

Having said that, I find myself visiting fewer and fewer sites as well. It’s not that I’m losing interest in the hobby, just that I’m growing tired of internet culture. Gaming blogs are a brilliant idea. Think about it: the ideal blog is one that is run by huge fans of games that aren’t concerned with advertising or contests or milk their ego…they just want to share their passion with everyone else.

Of course, I haven’t come across a blog like this since 1997 (no offense), back before they were called blogs and people realized that hosting sites, even fan sites, could get expensive.

The idea is sound, though, and I’d be willing to buy a magazine created with the same philosophy. I suppose what I want is a fanzine.

Sorry for the rant. Rose-colored or not, I do miss taking days to read through an entire issue of VG&CE. I was young, though, and the allure of magazines with lots of screen shots was awfully strong...

Hate to say this but my friends and I did buy every PiQ but were pretty much disappointed. As opposed to the stellar NewTypeUSA which was a must buy/read cover to cover magazine, that did one thing right (Japanese Media) PiQ was a bland mishmosh of content. The anime/manga/j-games content was a small fraction (though reasonably well written). The western content on the other hand was incredibly generic and redundant relative to mainstream content.
The reason why everybody bitched about the transition from NewTypeUSA to PiQ was that NewtypeUSA was a focused magazine that serviced a loyal and maniacal fanbase, while PiQ had no coherent target audience.

i had two issues of PIQ and i wish ADV publish a new anime magazine similer to newtype USA.

PiQ failed because you tried to market a generic Movies/books/entertainment mag with a little anime/j-pop/manga (I think the were a whole 6 pages of anime info in the last mag) to a hard core subscriber list of anime fans. I avidly read NTUSA, I have all but 3 or 4 issues from the 1st year, but I dropped PiQ after the 2nd issue because it did NOT have material I was interested in. Thou I cant say it's all bad, when I heard NTUSA's days were numbered I began looking into other mags, I have since subscribe to 2 new good anime/manga mags to replace it. The problem isn't readers or the internet or any of your other complaints, the problem was more basic, the poor business and marketing practices, of trying to sell a generic entertainment mag to a niche market.

Hi, I'm Peter Payne with J-List, and as we were one of the loyal advertisers who stuck with PiQ, I'd say we did our part. I'm sorry that things didn't work out. For our part, we loved having a single central anime magazine that had access to all the special Kadokawa content to give away to fans, and we got something like 10-12 verified new customers each day from Newtype USA -- that was incredible. PiQ was much smaller, but it was okay. I wish you success in the future!

That really sucks, Piq is one of the few magazines I've been picking up regularly over the past few months. I was thinking about getting a sucscription to support it, but I guess that didn't work out.

I know people are complaining about it not having a target audience, but I disgree - I'm probably in the minority, but I felt I was in that nebulous audience. I only have a passing interesting manga and anime - enough to want to read about it, but not purchase Newtype - and it covered a lot of general topics that I really dug. It also broadened my interest in stuff I usually wouldn't have seen by just reading a movie mag or video game mag. It's too bad that concept didn't pan out with the close minded folks who just wanted ALL ANIME ALL THE TIME.

Good luck man, I know it was short lived, but I'm definitely gonna miss it.

I don't think it matters how the magazine was presented, as a successor to NTUSA or not. I think the point that it takes a year to become profitable is a clear one. If the financing wouldn't let it live for more than four months, then that's it. I don't see how any new venture can make back its investements in four months.

Unfortunately, print is a declining business and while some new magazines do eventually last, the chances of staying are apparently declining.

I don't get many magazines (I didn't even hear of PiQ until too late), but the thing I don't like about web sites is the way every page acts as part article / column and part table of contents / index. Take a look at the two columns on the right. Does every page need a weekly archive link going back three years? Why not just have one link that links you to the weekly archives? That's an unnecessary. A lot of sites have two menu bars and two other bars for stuff that should be relegated to a table of contents page.

The graphics design work is at a minimum too. Pictures in magazines are usually nice and large, it's often not the case with web sites.

I tried to start a bakery once but noone appreciated my shitsandwhiches. I am telling you: bread is doomed!

As has been said, you tried to change your target demographic too rapidly. Barely any anime coverage, but still full-page ads for hentai games? That says all. I just want to know when the heck i get my money back, i had gotten ONE issue of NTUSA before it cancelled, and then 4 PiQ issues. Does anyone know what's gonna happen?

I bought all 4 issues of PIQ, and liked them. I'm not really into anime, but a few of my friends are, and I wanted a magazine that wasn't "just" a videogame magazine, but I got my fill of that along with more random things, which I enjoyed. I was saddened about PIQ's demise, and hope something pops up similiar in the future.

I actually have to agree with Kevin here and wag my finger at the angry fanboys who are still bitter over Newtype USA.

Sure it might be "generic" now but that's only because in this day and age everyone is able to bombard you with more or less the same information where as before it really only was the magazines that you could find out the fresh bits of info. I mean, come on. In gaming, for instance, you got IGN and Gamespot and that Bomb website, for instance, that can give you everything you'd ever want to know. For anime? You got dozens of fansubbers and fangroups who sing praise and bring over the episodes before they're ever released. You got youtube and wikipedia which, while not always accurate, still puts the information (and sometimes the episodes) infront of you all for the glorious cost of. . well, nothing.

It's hard for subscription-based, physical format publications to compete.

Oh, hey, best example. Remember strategy guides? Remember how we use to buy those so we could get through the damn games. When was the last time you bought one? Yeah, I know, you probably went to Cheat Planet or gamefaqs or whatever handy dandy site is out there now. Don't have to pay for all the secrets and tricks anymore.

Don't let nostalgia and personal bias blind you, guys. They wanted to bring you a quality product and tried but the market is both saturated and weak with the current state of the economy, making it hard to compete with the all powerful internet.

I loved Newtype but it was expensive (probably for the publishers as well as the readers) and I found it a lot easier to just go to the internet. I only had so much use for a magazine that focused on only one of my interests and they probably realized that, too. Remember, there are more than otaku out there. Not everyone is a hardcore anime fan. We're gamers, we're anime lovers. . we love comics and action figures. . . we love a good story and a naughty pic or two. . and all to varying degrees. Unfortunately for the biz that Kevin and his peers are in, you can get it all on the net for free and with ease.