About Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine

Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine

Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, usually abbreviated to OPM, was a monthly video game magazine published by Ziff Davis Media in San Francisco, California, from October 1997 to January 2007. It was the official United States magazine for Sony's PlayStation consoles, licensed by Sony Computer Entertainment America, and a sister publication of Electronic Gaming Monthly. Over 112 issues it covered the original PlayStation, the PlayStation 2, the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Portable.

OPM's defining feature sat inside the bag with every issue: a disc containing playable demos and videos of PlayStation games. In the decade before downloadable demos, that disc made the magazine a piece of software as much as a publication, and it explains both the magazine's popularity and, ultimately, the reason Sony gave for ending it.

Launch in 1997

The first issue, cover dated October 1997, was published on September 23, 1997. It replaced Ziff Davis's earlier unofficial PlayStation magazine PSX, keeping much of the same staff under a new look, with Wataru Maruyama as editor-in-chief. No other PlayStation magazine in the United States was officially licensed by Sony, and none other had a demo disc.

The first issue showed what readers were paying $7.99 for: a magazine of about 150 pages plus a disc with playable demos of PaRappa the Rapper, Intelligent Qube, Fighting Force and Ace Combat 2, and non-playable previews of Tomb Raider II and NFL GameDay 98. Its cover story was a primer on Ghost in the Shell, the PlayStation game adapted from the manga and anime, including an interview with the game's Japanese producer — an early sign that the magazine would treat Japanese gaming culture seriously, in an era when anime was still commonly marketed in America under the label Japanimation.

Coverage across four platforms

OPM's life tracked the PlayStation brand's expansion. It began in the mature years of the original PlayStation, covered the launch and reign of the PlayStation 2 — the best-selling console of its era — reported on the PlayStation Portable from 2005, and reached the PlayStation 3 at the end of 2006. Each issue combined news, previews, reviews, strategy and cultural features about PlayStation hardware, software and the community around them.

The magazine's reviews section presented itself as the final word — official and unbiased — and introduced its critics by name, specialty and current obsessions in a Meet the Critics panel. Its rating system used a five-point scale explained to readers in plain terms, from an excellent must-have game at the top to a game described as almost offensive in its badness at the bottom. Preview and review sections used colour coding to indicate a game's genre at a glance.

The demo discs

Every issue's packed-in disc was the magazine's unique selling point. For the original PlayStation the discs were CD-ROMs; for the PlayStation 2 era they became DVDs, with issues 49, 51, 53 and 55 through 112 including a PlayStation 2 demo DVD. The discs were developed by LifeLike Productions, Inc.

A typical PS2-era disc carried a half-dozen or more playable demos, video previews of forthcoming games, behind-the-scenes features and replay material such as notable moves and save files for current releases. For players without internet access to trailers or demos — then the great majority — the monthly disc was the only way to try games before buying them, and readers bought the magazine for the disc as often as for the print. Back issues are still collected largely for their discs.

Editorial character

OPM belonged to the Ziff Davis Game Group stable alongside Electronic Gaming Monthly, and it shared that group's house style: named critics with declared tastes, irreverent humour in its editorial panels, and coverage that mixed consumer advice with enthusiast enthusiasm. Editors such as Kraig Kujawa, who served as editor-in-chief during the PlayStation 2 years, wrote the reviews operation as a team sport, with deputy and associate editors assigned to the genres they played most — sports and strategy, adventure and role-playing, fighting and racing.

The magazine also covered the wider culture around the console: peripherals and gadgets were reviewed alongside games, anime and manga releases were rated in its pages, and features followed development teams and industry figures. Its website operated at opm.1up.com as part of Ziff Davis's 1UP network.

Beyond the games: gadgets, anime and manga

OPM's remit extended beyond game software. The first issue's review pages rated peripherals and gadgets alongside cultural products: a steering-wheel controller and a one-handed controller designed for role-playing games were scored, as were a head-mounted video display, manga compilations, imported Final Fantasy VII character figures and a Star Wars electronic board game. Anime video releases were recommended in the same pages, reflecting how thoroughly Japanese popular culture had become part of the PlayStation experience for American players.

That breadth was deliberate positioning. The magazine presented itself not merely as a buyer's guide to discs but as the official companion to a whole entertainment culture — hardware, accessories, animation, comics and collectibles included — which is one reason its features and interviews ranged well beyond the games industry itself.

Why it ended: the PlayStation Network

Sony Computer Entertainment America and the Ziff Davis Game Group announced that they had mutually agreed to discontinue the magazine, with the final issue dated January 2007 — issue 112. Sony's reasoning was stated plainly by Peter Dille, its senior vice president of marketing: a key element of OPM had been the playable disc packed in with every magazine, and with the launch of the PlayStation 3 and its full network and web capabilities, Sony intended to deliver that content through the PlayStation Network and PlayStation.com instead of on discs.

Sony described the shift as a natural evolution of its content delivery strategy, moving assets online to meet the needs of the contemporary PlayStation consumer. High-definition downloadable trailers and demos, previously found only on OPM's DVD, would be available to everyone through the network. Sony also said it would continue working with Ziff Davis's editorial staff and other partners on news coverage, previews, reviews, developer profiles and executive interviews for its other properties — an acknowledgment that the magazine's journalism, if not its disc, still had a home.

Succession

The official-magazine role did not lapse for long, but it changed hands and publishers. After OPM was discontinued in January 2007, the independent PlayStation magazine PSM was relaunched as PlayStation: The Official Magazine in December 2007, replacing OPM as the official magazine for Sony consoles — without, in the network era, the demo disc that had defined its predecessor.

Legacy

OPM's nearly ten-year run documents a transition in how games reached players. It was among the last great print magazines whose value proposition included physical software, and its closure — explicitly justified by a console maker's new online network — is one of the clearest markers of the moment distribution moved from discs in magazines to downloads on consoles.

For PlayStation's first three generations, OPM was the brand's official paper companion: the place where demos arrived monthly, where reviews carried names and faces, and where the culture of a new medium was written down as it happened. Its 112 issues and their discs remain a collected archive of that era, and the magazine is still the reference point against which later official PlayStation publications are measured.