Future reshuffles games magazine management
The restructuring effort at leading games magazine publisher Future continues apace, with a forthcoming reshuffle of the senior management of the firm's games division being announced today in the wake of magazine closures in other divisions earlier in the week.
The group publishers in the games division - which remained unaffected by the reduction to Future's magazine portfolio earlier this week, when 11 titles were closed down - are each taking on new roles, with Mia Walters taking over Nintendo, PlayStation and multi-format games titles, and James Binns focusing on PC gaming and Xbox titles.
James Ashton-Tyler, meanwhile, is shifting his focus to the firm's online games site business - and will be managing both GamesRadar and computerandvideogames.com, the first time that both of Future's sites have been managed as part of a single online portfolio.
A Future spokesperson confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz this afternoon that the changes to the management of the games titles will not take effect immediately, but will instead take place in January 2007, following the return of Mia Walters from maternity leave.
"We're confident that these management changes will enable us to maintain our position as the UK's leading publisher of video games magazines and websites," James Ashton-Tyler told us this afternoon, while Mia Walters commented that "it's great to be coming back to the business at such an exciting time of growth in the games industry."
All of the group publishers in the games division will report directly to the group publishing director, Simon Wear, and further reshuffles to the management of other aspects of Future's portfolio are expected to be announced internally in the near future.
As part of this change to the structure of the company, Future managing director Robert Price also informed staff of two high-level redundancies within the firm - with operations director Ian Linkins, formerly finance director of the group, and publishing director Dom Beaven both set to leave their roles at the end of October.
Neither Linkins nor Beaven is set to be replaced, with their duties instead being reassigned to a number of other directors.