We just got word that former gaming magazine editor John Davison has just opened up a new gaming website for parents. This particular website reportedly aims to be the "video games guide for parents" and was established due to the alleged proliferation of violent titles.

John Davison is not at all a stranger to the video game industry. He used to be the editor of magazines EGM as well as the Official PlayStation Magazine for U.S. Check the full story by clicking the "read more" link below.

Future, the company that publishes the "Official" line of gaming magazines has reported significant growth in readership from its web and print portfo;ios in the past months thanks in large part to the Xbox 360 and Nintendo wings.

Xbox 360: The Official Xbox Magazine is now officially the fastest-growing game publication in the United Kingdom, circulating 65,673 copies during the past year, clinching a total annual growth of 54 percent.

The Official Nintendo Magazine also did well as a result of the immense and still growing popularity of the DS handheld and the Wii console. The rise in readership was tallied at 35 percent which translated in 47,925 total copies sold.

Future reported declines in the circulation of the Official PlayStation Magazine but explained that this is due to the seasonal lull in game industry activity. It also said that recovery was promising after Blu-ray demo discs were included with each issue after June.

Slow activity was also observed in the multiplatform publications under Future along with its PC-gaming interests. However, it said that its websites GamesRadar and CVG attract 3.25 and 1.56 million users a month respectively.

Gamers are now preferring other media for gaming information, it would seem, as the latest figures have revealed that uni-platform gaming magazines are in continuing decline.

ABC has revealed that many Future and Imagine titles has fallen once again. While the sales figures for the Official PlayStation Magazine 3 were not provided, OPSM2's monthly circulation is down by 24 percent from the August 2006 figures, hitting 76,351.

Official Xbox 360 sales, however, were boosted coming up from 42,680 to just over 56,000. A very good news for publisher Future, since it has closed Official Xbox publication recently.

Without the OPSM3 figures, monthly sales of the official titles went down to 175,368, compared to 218,863 six months ago.

In the lead in the unofficial mag titles is Imagine-published Play, with sales of 29,000 despite a 37.5 percent drop in readership compared to last year. Future's PSW figures went down from nearly 34,500 to just over 26,000 copies. Other Imagine titles went down with the following statistics: Powerstation with 15,171 copies from 22, 288 last year, 360 with 11,369 copies from 13,098.

Future published PC gaming titles went down with the following numbers: PC Zone from just over 30,000 to 27,000 while PC Gamer lost 1675 readers, hitting just over 43,600. The decline for PC titles appears to be slow but steady.

The bright spot for these gaming magazine publishers were seen in the stable sales position of multi-platform magazines. Future's Games Master sales hovers around the 54,000 mark while Imagine's Games TM sales stays at 20,000. Future's Edge sales also rose up to four percent from 33,597 to 35,145.

Recently, Nintendo has been grabbing a lot readers' attention, it would seem, after a 17 percent rise in the sales of Official Nintendo Magazine, with readers buying 43,000 copies a month.

James Ashton of Future Publishing complained that the falling magazine sales are to be blamed on the rapid transition to next-generation consoles and the rise in the amount of video game coverage in the mainstream media. Guess we'll be seeing more of you guys checking out this site!

For a good while now, we've been hearing various reports and rumors about the recent sale that Ziff Davis is intending to make. Well, apparently, the whole issue is expected to be finally put to rest "in the next day or two". Normally, this would have been good news.

The element in this whole saga which has been keeping the industry at the edge of their seats is the fact that Ziff Davis owns the widely popular gaming website 1UP.com, and its offline counterpart, Electronic Gaming Monthly. One has to remember that EGM has already been churning out reviews and features since the days of the NES, while 1UP has already established itself as one of the prime resources of gaming-related news on the web, so the prospect of these being sold off by its parent company will most definitely have major implications.

At the moment, many are waiting with bated breath on how the whole deal will affect the staff of both 1UP and EGM (and along with staff comes the content, of course), what sort of changes will the public be looking forward to, and whether these changes will be for the better or otherwise. Many have fears about the outcome of the deal, especially after the Official Playstation Magazine was cancelled just last November.

In the meantime, we'll be keeping an eye out for updates on this matter, so stay tuned.