An era of self-discovery has come to an end – the Official PlayStation Magazine UK will no longer include a demo disc.
Back in the days of the PSone and PlayStation 2, firing up the latest OPM cover disc and discovering a hidden gem – or even finding out a game is less rubbish than you expected – was something of a simple pleasure.
Sadly as the years have passed the humble cover disc has become less relevant – usually the demos have been available on PSN for weeks, if not months, beforehand.
To quote editor Ben Wilson, the disc is being ditched as “You guys have told us repeatedly that the disc spends more time as a coaster than in your PS3”.
The monthly mag will instead come bundled with free gifts. Issue 85 – out June 7th priced £5.99 – is promised to include a The Last of Us poster and a 30 day PS Plus trial.
Unless we’re mistaken, Sony forbids full games to be given away with magazines. So as much as we’d like to see codes to redeem the occasional PS Mini or PSN title in the future, cheat books and supplement magazines seem more likely.
The magazine has also received a facelift ahead of the PS4’s release, including two new monthly features. You can catch a glimpse here.
As the Xbox One looms near, we wouldn’t be surprised if the Official Xbox Magazine’s demo disc is also dropped eventually. Indeed, our more cynical side sees the death of the OPM disc as cost saving exercise – those Blu-ray disks can’t be cheap to produce, and with magazine sales at an all time low Future Publishing will be looking to save money by any possible means.