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.