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  1. P.S.X. (short for PlayStation Experience) was an unofficial magazine covering PlayStation games and accessories. It is one of the first PlayStation mags in the U.S. (along with PSExtreme), and it was Ziff Davis's only PS publication until they acquired the rights to run Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine in 1997. History It began life as a one-off special published by Sendai in the late summer of 1995. After the PlayStation's successful Christmas season, Sendai ramped the publication up to a bimonthly schedule, putting it in the same category as Mega Play and Super NES Buyer's Guide. Todd Mowatt was editor-in-chief of both this magazine and Cyber Sports, working on the two titles in alternating months. Unlike those two publications (which were mostly filled with recycled content), P.S.X. featured a more modern design style and a somewhat more mature level of writing. Reviews were similar in style to Computer Game Review, with every game getting a page, a long spout of review text, and three scores out of 100 by three different editors. When Ziff Davis bought Sendai in 1996, the publisher decided to make P.S.X. a monthly, and by mid-1997 the magazine was already more robust and popular than PSExtreme. Ziff closed the magazine a month before launching Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine in October 1997; its final issue coincides with PSM's first.
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  2. Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine (usually abbreviated to OPM) is a monthly magazine devoted to entirely to Sony game platforms, including the PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and PSP systems. Reflecting the magazine's mature and hardcore readership, the magazine also features coverage on new technology and classic nerd pursuits, including anime. On November 14, 2006, Ziff Davis announced that the U.S. OPM would close with its January 2007 issue. History Despite its position in the marketplace, Sony's PlayStation did not have an official magazine in the U.S. until two years after it debuted in the region. In its place, there were two unofficial magazines covering the PS exclusively: Sendai's P.S.X., and Dimension Publishing's PSExtreme (originally titled Dimension P.S.X.). Over in the UK, meanwhile, Future Publishing signed an agreement with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe in 1995 to publish the Official PlayStation Magazine across the European continent, beginning with the UK edition in November 1995. This magazine included a Sony-sanctioned demo disc from the very first issue, and the UK edition was the highest-selling magazine in the country for nearly half a decade, only being supplanted by its successor, the Official UK PlayStation 2 Magazine. (The PS1-oriented OPM continued independently of the PS2 mag in the UK, running for over eight years until its final issue in March 2004.) In 1997, Sony Computer Entertainment America saw Future's success with OPM in the UK and decided to sanction a similar magazine for the US marketplace. Curiously, Future's US division (still called Imagine Publishing at the time) was not awarded the rights to publish the magazine; instead, the honor went to Ziff Davis Media, which had made P.S.X. a monthly magazine in 1997. (Imagine launched its own unofficial PlayStation magazine PSM a month before OPM debuted in the US.) The Disc OPM's main sell is the disc included with each issue, which includes game demos, preview movies, and other bits of game coverage. This disc was made for the PlayStation 1 at first; the first PlayStation 2 demo disc debuted with issue 49 in October 2001. The magazine then alternated between PS1 and PS2 discs for the next half-year; issue 54 (March 2002) was the last one with a PS1 disc included. Since OPM's newsstand sales traditionally live and die by the content of this disc, OPM's editors have more leeway on the cover design and internals of their magazine, giving it a sleek, avant-garde design unique among Ziff publications. Despite the disc, however, OPM's circulation has always lagged behind the lower-price PSM. OPM's average paid circulation for the period between January-June 2006 was 252,267.
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