Archive Dutch game magazine Power Unlimited on USB stick

The Dutch video game magazine Power Unlimited is digitising its 30-year archive and is offering this archive for sale to its fans. Power Unlimited is celebrating its 30th anniversary. The first edition of the magazine appeared in July 1993. Over the years, the magazine, which now appears ten times a year, has grown into the largest games magazine in the Benelux.

The archive, consisting of almost 350 issues, will not appear online, but will be delivered in a one-off action on a USB stick for 39,95 euro. The USB stick archive will be delivered in September. The supply will be limited. In September the printed jubilee edition will be available with a review of history of the magazine. The combination of the USB stick and jubilee magazine will be available at 47,50 euro.

The first Power Unlimited magazine was published in July 1993 by defunct VNU Media. From 2007 Power Unlimited was published by HUB Publishers, which went bankrupt in 2013. But the magazine was saved by Reshift Digital.

Power Unlimited has not limited itself to print. It has organised game competitions such as Unlimited Game Awards, published DVDs, presented television programs on TMF-Netherlands and MTV and has its own YouTube channel Power Unlimited

 

VNU Media sharpens its strategy

VNU Media, the spin-out publishing company of the VNU conglomerate, which turned into Nielsen, has announced the sale of some of her Dutch publications. Earlier the company indicated already that its will diminish her international ambitions by selling foreign subsidiaries. VNU Media wants to position itself as a computer business media company.

The company has announced that it will sell some niche publications, management magazines and some consumer PC magazines. It will sell a stable business title for the fashion world Textilia and Shoevisie to Mybusinsesmedia; Textilia has been a title since the formation of VNU Business Group in the late seventies. The management titles Management Team and Sprout will be sold; Management Team has been in the portfolio since 1986. Consumer titles such as PCM, Computer idee, Power Unlimited and the gadget website Gizmodo, the consumer computer titles will also be abandoned.

With the formation of the new company VNU Media with the assistance of 3i, the company had decided to sell off the UK operation, which was the first international stepping stone for the former VNU conglomerate. Also the companies on the European continent, except for Belgium, are for sale.

The strategy of VNU Media concentrates itself on the B2B market in print and online products in the field of computing as well as the job recruitment market. Textilia and Shoevisie are small and outside the focus of computing; the management and consumer PC products have too little recruitment potential. VNU Media will now focus in The Netherlands on the market of the computing business as far as publications such as Computable, Emerce and the site Tweakers are concerned and on the job recruitment market with the newly acquired Nationale Vacaturebank (National Job recruitment database). Also its flagship Intermediair, a controlled circulation weekly for students and academics and similar titles will continue under the management of VNU Media.

The sale of the magazines will deliver a 20 percent of the turn-over this year. By a fast autonomous growth of the company in slimmed shape, VNU Media should be one year ahead of its financial objective. Already 50 percent of its revenues comes from online sources. The CEO of VNU Media Eric Hoekstra denied in an interview that the changes have been forced upon them by the 3i investment company.

I worked for VNU in the seventies and the eighties; in the eighties I worked for seven years in the VNU Business Group. It looks like VNU Media is back to basics, when they started their internationalisation program in 1980. The only difference is now that they have online sites and databases; in 1980 VNU Business Press Group started its first adventures in online with the acquisition of US company Disclosure and its own media lab VNU Database Publishing International bv (DPI).

Blog Posting Number: 868

Tags: business publishing, job recruitment

VNU Media: new start, same problems

It is all over the Dutch publications and blogs: VNU Business Media Europe makes a new start as VNU Media. (Whatever you think the company is still Dutch pride). But there is more: the company goes after business internet movies. It is a new start for VNU, but it has the same problems as it used to have.

When VNU was broken up by private equity last year, the European business publications section was sold to 3i. Immediately the UK subsidiary was sold on. And recently the company (or what is left of it) changed its name from VNU Business Media Europe into VNU Media. The company profiles itself as an IT information and media company with subsidiaries in Germany, France, Italy, Belguim and Spain. The major activity of VNU Media will be in The Netherlands.

In no uncertain terms, the new management made clear that it wants to change from a print publisher to a blended media publisher, moving from a turn over of 70 percent from print to a 50 percent. One of the digital activities will be a service like YouTube, but then for business. Asked for the business model, the management indicated that it still was looking how to make money.

I am not sure whether the management was honest by saying that it did not know where the revenues had to come from or whether it just was playing dummy. Personally I hope that they were just playing dummy, otherwise they did not learn anything over the years.

VNU’s business publication section stem from the late seventies and the early eighties. It was set up as a new money spinner next to the consumer magazines. Once the Business Press Group was established there were two basic aims: internationalisation and solid revenue sources. The first international acquisition was VNU Business Publications in London, which was formed out of the computer and accountancy magazines of Haymarket publishing company. As for the revenue sources VNU in general, but VNU business publications especially had to look for other than advertisement sources. Advertisements are great in economic high times, but a pest in low economic tides.

In some way it looks like VNU Media is back to when it all began. No UK subsidiary; granted some small subsidiaries on the continent. VNU Media has been reduced to a company with main revenues coming from The Netherlands. And for some 70 per cent these revenues come from print and mainly from advertisements. Over the years VNU has learned to counterbalance income from advertisements. It bought database vendors with need-to-have data.

So now VNU Media wants to go into internet video without any idea of a business model. But whatever the model, digital media will have to replace 20 percent of the print advertisement revenue stream. YouTube for business can be one of the opportunities, but more solid sources of revenue will have to be found.

I congratulate the management and employees of VNU Media with their change of name and the YouTube idea. But now they should put down the champagne and get into their cubicles in order to come up with a solid business plan for the coming years.

BTW Get the new URL going and that vnubme.com site cleaned up!

Blog Posting Number: 684

Tags: business information