The situation is still more mystifying when you realise that Edge is actually pretty good. It's lovely to look at, well-informed, analyses games with more intelligence than almost anyone, and has consistently managed to stay at the forefront of the business' sometimes absurdly fast-paced development. So the casual observer could be forgiven for seeking a look at the bigger picture in the search for enlightenment, and sure enough, first glance appears to provide a clue. The market for multi-format magazines in general, not so long ago the dominant force in UK games mag publishing, has never been limper. The three main publications inhabiting the sector between them sell fewer than half as many copies as a single month's Official Playstation Magazine, a situation that's strange for a number of reasons. Not least of those is that, due to the restrictions placed on OPM by its officially-licenced nature (for example, the embarrassing need to constantly and transparently feign excitement at "imminent" new releases which everyone reading the mag knows have been out in Japan for six months already), any of the multi-formats can actually offer a better, broader range of Playstation coverage than the official mag, in addition to their obvious ability to cover other formats too.

And strangeness continues to pile upon strangeness - against this background of the public's seeming resistance to multi-format mags, and at a time when the market is arguably less multi-formatted than it's ever been (the PC and PS between them holding an overpowering dominance, and offering seemingly little crossover), the publishing business is on the brink of the biggest flurry of activity in living memory. Already, we've seen (if we were watching very closely) the appearance of a multi-format fortnightly called Format Power (although your chronicler suspects this situation will be reversed by the time you read those words), and more dramatically, the autumn will herald the unleashing of two high-profile new monthlies, one of which will be manned by some of the business' most decorated and battle-scarred veterans. The lumbering behemoth of Future and the yappy upstart Rapide are on course for a head-to-head collision the likes of which hasn't been seen in the sector for years, and which has those of us who love a good ruck licking their lips in anticipation. But I'm getting ahead of myself as usual. Why now for multi-formats? Where have they been hiding? And why hasn't anyone wanted to buy one for the last five years? The logical place to start seemed to be back at the beginning, so I called on Tony Mott, who recently gave up a cushy 9-to-5 PR job at Konami to take over the 24-hour reins at Edge. Such a decision naturally raised fears of rampant dribbling insanity, so I avoided any sudden movements while posing the question, "So, Tony, why ARE Edge's sales figures so completely dismal?"

"When Edge started it had a very clear mission statement -- something that was communicated especially well in its cross-promotional activities at the time -- and that was that it's not a magazine for everybody. The editorial team at the time did very well in achieving that goal -- they produced something that had never been seen before."

And still hasn't been, at least by most people. Rapide's Dave Perry has suggested that Edge is trying to replicate the Sex Pistols' business plan from 1976 - deliberately avoid people being able to see you in order to retain an air of mystique and excitement.

"No-one knows how many real hardcore gamers there are in the UK, but the number certainly hasn't grown in direct proportion to that of mainstream gamers over the last few years, and that's the chief reason for Edge's ABC figure remaining fairly static. Hardcore gamers, just like myself once upon a time, are consumers who absolutely have to be on top of every new development in the industry -- be it a new console from Sega, new PC 3D graphics technology, or whatever -- and we have to give them what they need because there is no other magazine that does that. Videogaming has obviously gone totally mainstream in recent years, but the gamers reading the likes of PlayStation Power, for example, simply want a buyer's guide. That's not we've ever been about, and we never will be, per se."

So if none of these thousands of new readers everyone else seems to be picking up are "hardcore" gamers, who the heck are they?

"I'm completely aware that a new kind of gamer exists today -- the kind that once had a tinker on his mate's Mega Drive five years ago after kicking-out time at the pub and found it merely a diversion, not something essential, but who now sees the value in today's technology and software - but I'm not sure that he's ever going to be an Edge reader. These are casual gamers, and I can't see Edge ever being a magazine for casual gamers."

But surely any magazine editor wants to be read by the biggest potential audience they can possibly reach?

"Naturally, but Edge will simply never be a super-mass-market mag in the same way that, say, Dazed And Confused will never be one -- which isn't to say that I'd necessarily associate the two mags in any other respect, incidentally. The substantial growth in the market that you're talking about has brought in, as I said, casual gamers. We can't pick those people up without turning the whole concept of the magazine on its head - you know that - and that's something we won't be doing. We'll be /improving/ the magazine in the coming months, and maybe some of the improvements will bring in a wider audience. It's certainly not my prime goal, though."

With this, the attractiveness of the Edge editor's seat becomes a little clearer. It's a luxury afforded to few, if any, other editors to be under no pressure to increase a magazine's readership. Future's indulgence of the title could, without too much effort, be seen as a throwback to the company's more innocent days as a homely little cottage business run from Chris Anderson's outside toilet (or whatever), even a sop to the ethical high ground certain elements of Future's management still claim an emotional attachment to despite the necessarily harder-nosed financial pressures brought about by the company's relentless progress towards the big league of real-world publishing. Certainly, the position is envied (with widely varyng degrees of warmth) by the staff of both other, less-favoured Future magazines, and those of competitors. "If I'd run my magazine the way Edge has been allowed to operate for the last five years," said one games-mag editor who was - for obvious reasons - extremely keen to remain anonymous, "I'd have been out of a job four-and-a-half years ago."

But back to Tony. Why does he think it is, then, that the multi-format market has seemed so unwilling to support a seriously successful magazine in recent times?

"I don't think that you can class videogaming in the same 'hobbyist' category as you might have been able to, say, ten years ago. Mainstream popularity has formed a certain videogaming fraternity that really doesn't give a shit which machine, whether it's the PlayStation or the N64 or whatever, can generate the most polys per frame, and at how many frames per second. At least 80 per cent of gamers today are interested in what they're *led* to be interested in, be that by marketing men via comprehensive advertising campaigns or by hype in mainstream magazines."

But surely it's exactly this new lack of loyalty which should have provided the ideal conditions for a format-independent publication to thrive?

"Again, I think it's related to the infancy of our industry, and perhaps the
general marketing of videogames mags. Consoles and videogames themselves have been given the hard sell, but not many games mags ever have. I'm not a marketing man, but I can see the value in what's been done with the Official Playstation mag in terms of getting the product out there and into consciousness of the average bloke on the street."

In terms of audiences, are you worried about Future's imminent new multi-format mag stepping on Edge's toes? From what we hear, it sounds like it's going to be targetting a not-dissimilar reader to yours. Who do you think's going to be buying it?

"Many of my friends and yours, probably, who haven't played videogames with any degree of real commitment since the '80s but are coming back now because of the PlayStation; people who have have already contributed to the success of the Official PlayStation Magazine. That's who I'd be aiming it at, anyway -- I'm sure Matt [Bielby] has his own, perhaps vastly different, vision."

Talking of OPM, it's perhaps significant that even it seems to be moving towards developing some kind of personality, identifying its writers for the first time in its history. This, of course, leaves Edge as, off the top of my head, the only magazine of any kind to be entirely anonymously written. It's, I've always thought, a very odd strategy - by and large, if you're trying to create an authoritative voice, it's extremely hard to do it if no-one knows who you are. People are naturally suspicious of anonymity, and it's clearly impossible to form a bond of trust with someone whose name you don't even know. Could this be one of the real reasons that the games-buying public hasn't warmed to Edge?

"Perhaps, but in fact I think the vast majority of videogame consumers simply don't see the value of magazines dedicated to the topic at all. They're perfectly happy to go on a friend's recommendation or from the look of a Lara Croft render on a poster. I hear so many people say that Edge is such a cold read, but it wasn't always that way. [Original editor] Steve Jarratt's Edge was actually quite warm in places, but you have to find that vital balance, and I'm looking into it."

Sounds like you don't especially want to make friends with the great unwashed gaming masses...

"I despair at the amount of uneducated buying decisions that are made in the videogames world every single day of the week, but it's not my job to change that - and I don't think I could anyway. If people are stupid enough to go out and spend £50 without first getting an expert opinion on what they're buying, well, I'm not especially interested in talking to them."