What is the real market for a new ZX Spectrum Next magazine?

With the Sinclair-branded ZX Spectrum Next being a highly capable and enhanced 8-bit micro computer, is there really a market for printed matter publications covering it exclusively?

One of my favourite magazines from the 1980s, despite being mostly a Commodore C64 user and fanboy, was Your Sinclair (YS), clearly an highly intellectual and serious magazine aimed at the brainy kids. Of course, I couldn't count myself in the latter category, but the carefully designed and well thought out content still somehow appealed to me. From 2002, the 20th year of the C64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum, I became a freelance writer, and I think then in 2004 (from Tuesday, May 4th as I recall), I was briefly a staffer at Retro Gamer. To my delight, I was lucky enough to work on the YS tribute issue, the famous issue 94 which, despite some minor grumblings, seemed to hit the spot with its design and obviously verbose and articulate content.

Of course, since 2004 a lot has changed in the Speccy scene, and nothing more notable in my opinion than the Speccy Next computer. Although it feels unfinished to me in many regards, it is clearly a clever piece of kit that does a lot more than just what a Spectrum did (kind of like any computer running a good emulator, but, you know, different). Ironically, I suspect that many of these 'ere new snazzy features are largely unused, and most people are either using their Next machines as a modern days and reliable ZX Spectrum that can use new television sets, or purely as an investment. After all, there aren't more than 10,000 units produced, and I suspect around half as many owners. This excludes other Next solutions and emulation, which although I've not looked into too greatly, I'm sure exist.

And with the launch of The Spectrum, from Retro Games Ltd, I suspect many people have reboxed their expensive Next machines to use The Spectrum instead, which is mass produced and cheaper to replace, and has that lovely rubber feel. Ohh... Rubber... Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Err... sorry about that.

So, although I'm not a maths surgeon, let's try to work out how successful or not a dedicated Speccy Next magazine might be, should one launch, with some estimates based on what we know about just the Next by itself and not any other clones or emulators. The original KickStarter had 3,113 backers, plus some units were sold through the official site, so let's say that number is 4,000. The second kickstarter had 5,236 backers, but again some units, as far as I can tell, also sold through the official site, so let's say that there are around 5,500 of the V2 units about (some apparently a brilliant white), we're not far off my 10,000 estimate above, but we'll use that figure for the easiness of the calculations.

With anything in life, there is usually between 10 - 20% of people who seem to be somewhat evangelical about this thing or that, and some Next owners I've come across have this unwavering love for the Next, and any modest criticism of it isn't welcome to their ears or eyes. So, if we assume that there are ~10,000 Next owners, which there aren't - as many people backed both Kickstarter campaigns - that would mean a market for any magazine of around 2,000 readers if we assume that 20% of those 10,000 are real fanboys. That's a pretty good number to be selling a printed magazine for such a niché product in 2025 in my opinion. However, the true number will be fewer than half of that.

As I mentioned, many people backed both KickStarter campaigns, so the likely number of Next owners is more likely to be closer to 5,000 (remembering that we are of course excluding here other solutions through FPGA and such). Still, ~1,000 sales can't be bad if we assume 20% of users subscribing or otherwise regularly procuring such printed matter. But I still think this is a little high as an estimate. Whatever my conjecture is, this is a very generous upper end of how many magazines might sell into this market on an issue by issue basis. The true number is likely to be fewer than 500, because most users are likely using the Next as nothing more than a Speccy, and are probably much more interested in actual real ZX Spectrum content over the niceties that the Next offers. Plus, other than making Speccy games look better, the Next isn't opening up a whole world of other possibilities for most users. And there are only so far 62 exclusive pieces of software available for it, according to the official site as of 2025-01-31. How much content one is able to generate out of only 62 pieces of software is therefore somewhat questionable, or at least it is to me. Kind of like when Future Publishing kept publishing Commodore Format (CF), but had nothing new to write about, so many of the issues at that time covered Mayhem in Monsterland again, and again. Sure, it was a fine game, and thankfully the magazine was saved when Psytronik Software and other upstarts like Electric Boys Entertainment Software and Visualize Software released and promised new games. But at least that CF was still selling in the thousands back then. Something that no dedicated Speccy Next magazine could ever do. Not in printed form anyway.

Bring back the personal computer

Or is it back already?

I've now been exposed to video games and computering technologies for almost as long as I've been alive, which is nearly five decades at the time of writing, so won't be any fewer decades by the time you, my dear reader, are scrutinising yet another of my blog posts. As you can guess, I've seen lots of different technologies, from the Binatone Pong styled games, to the Texas TI99/4a (a robots game that I don't remember the name of) to the most modern days whatever it is that my favourite daughter plays on these ere games consoles.

Mentioning games consoles, I was never a fan. Whilst I saw some use of pocket or portable systems, the Atari Lynx, for instance, has allowed me many hours of escapism over the years. But dedicated consoles? Where was the keyboard? And why make such obviously powerful and useful technologies difficult to program? Okay, so I get the point that because home computers like the Sinclair and Commodore offerings could be programmed by anyone meant that whilst there was an abundance of software, that didn't mean you got quality releases. The big N, with its zealous control over releases for it's so-called Entertainment Systems might not boast nearly as many games as the working class ZX Spectrum, or the slightly more upmarket Commodore C64 - and even the "flash in the pan" VIC-20 managed nearly as many releases - at least each release was of a certain quality, right? I also found it rather puzzling that the company that rhymes with Tintendo (or that's how someone from t'north of England might pronounce it, well almost) had to have "official" magazines too, but as a scholar of Professor Marshall McLuhan, I know what he meant with his "The Medium is the Message" theory. Put a seal of quality on your game boxes, and then publish glossy literature to say how quality those quality releases are. Clever.

For me, the computer was always King, until the market stopped producing personal computers and started making the same thing in a different box, allowing monopolisation to take over so that ultimately corporations could benefit from the fact that the office computer was now also essentially the home computer (and also the dangers of that being the case too). But before I blame IBM or whoever for monopolisation, this happened early on in the UK market too, one might argue. Britain produced many computer systems in the early 1980s; offerings from Tangerine with its Oric, Memotech, Dragon Data, Acorn and Sinclair were just some of the companies slugging it out, and one might conclude that Sinclair won the first round, but was then absorbed into Amstrad. At least some plurality survived through the 1980s and into the early 1990s though. And Apple are still a thing today. At least it was there at the start thanks to the technical genius of Steve Wozniak. But Apple has mainly pioneered the high consumer price point, finding a niche that the standard PC could not compete in. The same could have been for the Amiga and Atari ST but for some dubious decisions at Commodore and Atari Corp. The Amiga was way ahead of the market when it came to graphics, and shouldn't have let that one slip, but somehow it did.

Anyway, I started this post thinking I'd write about one thing, and through some mental meandering I end up in a completely different place. I guess this happens sometimes. Like many of you, I miss the days when computers were more joyful and personal, and different machines had different strengths or weaknesses. The Amstrad CPC range for instance had... well I'm unable to think of any strengths for that particular system. But I found an entertaining 10 line BASIC game for the ZX81, which was a simple memory game. Of course, because it was BASIC, I had to do my refactoring to reduce the number of BASIC bytes it was using, then I made it so that the screen cleared between each level without adding a new line number, because that for me is what I love about computers. Or at least the computers from the 1980s. I'd say "bring back the personal computer", but in many cases some people already have; the MEGA 65, Ultimate64 Elite, Sinclair ZX Spectrum Next, Omni 128/128HD and the various offerings from Retro Games Ltd, such as THE400 Mini and THEA500 Mini (although neither have a working keyboard as standard, something I grumbled about above with games consoles, a USB keyboard is easy enough to add).

Want some more Culture in your Gaming life?

So full of content, you'll hear people say "I never knew there was so much in it!"

A promising development in the world of printed matter, especially for those with a pre-disposition for video gaming, is the announcement and campaign launch of Gaming Culture (GC), a magazine that promises to be for gamers and by gamers. Our hobby, the escapism and brain flexing offered by this form of personal entertainment is after all pretty important; it defines one's character and has for many of us been a life changer. And whilst I was always a programmer first, programming is itself a game; trying to create something to hold the attention of another human, to present someone else with a challenge in the form of a puzzle to solve, or (in my case) a short "arcadey" type reaction game of some ilk. Sadly, many of my efforts in the 1980s were written in BASIC, but one has to say that even with this being the case, I still managed some level of playability. With my slowly diminishing memories, I may try to recreate some of those games I made as a child at some point. I can still recall some of them which were recorded onto cassette tapes that I had nicked from my father, much to his distain when he found out.

GC will be a 96 page affair, brimming with excellent gaming content being from the creative mind of That Retro Video Gamer, the redoubtable Chris Thacker. Rather than regurgitate the full KickStarter campaign here, below is all of the information that you need, in a lovely iframe. Just click below to be taken to the campaign, and please consider backing it if you are able to.

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