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Xenia Edizioni

The Milan publisher of the Italian Zzap! and The Games Machine after Newsfield

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Xenia Edizioni S.r.l. of Milan published the Italian editions of Zzap! and The Games Machine from September 1991, the month Newsfield went into liquidation. It kept the same staff, PO box, printer and distributor as Edizioni Hobby, and a former staff writer recalled the change as a new name for the same publisher. It dropped the Newsfield licence line in October 1991, closed Zzap! in December 1993, and published The Games Machine until it sold the title in 2005.

Xenia Edizioni S.r.l. of Via Dell’Annunciata 31, Milan, is the name on the colophons of the Italian Zzap! and The Games Machine from September 1991. That was the month Newsfield, the British company that had licensed both titles, went into voluntary liquidation. The magazines carried on without it. Zzap! ran for two more years, and The Games Machine stayed with Xenia for fourteen years before it was sold. It is still published.

A new name on the same magazines

Until July 1991 both magazines named Edizioni Hobby as publisher. The September issues named Xenia Edizioni instead, and nothing else changed. In January 1992 The Games Machine’s colophon still listed Roberto Ferri as direttore responsabile (the editor legally answerable for the magazine), editorial post to Casella Postale 853, Milan, printing by Rotolito Lombarda at Cernusco sul Naviglio, advertising through Spaziotre on Piazzale Archinto and distribution by ME.PE. on Viale Famagosta. The court registration was still the one Edizioni Hobby had obtained in September 1988: Tribunale di Milano no. 587.

The colophons record the new name but not the business behind it. One of the magazines’ writers supplied a clue. In the last Italian Zzap!, in December 1993, Fabio Rossi remembered phoning the publisher in 1988, when “si chiamava ancora Edizioni Hobby” (“it was still called Edizioni Hobby”). On his account, Xenia was the same publishing house under a new name rather than a buyer.

The September 1991 issues still printed the line “Su licenza di Newsfield Publications”. From October it was gone, and the two magazines were Italian publications with British names.

What it published

The Italian Zzap! closed with its December 1993 issue, a year after the last British ZZAP!64.

The Games Machine grew instead. Its December 1991 issue came out with extra pages under the seasonal title The Christmas Machine, and specials followed: a Christmas 1994 special sold as a supplement to issue 70, and in the summer of 1998 an unnumbered special to keep readers company until September, carrying the reviews that had not fitted into the usual double summer issue. By February 1992 the same staff were producing TGM Action, a companion monthly sold with a disk of playable demos. Its editorial admitted that it had begun as an experiment and explained why the disk came separately: fixing it to the magazine, as many foreign titles did, would have pushed the cover price too high for the Italian market. In 1998 the summer special came with a back issue of PC Force, which the editorial called Xenia’s new title, “dedicata principalmente a trucchi e soluzioni” (“devoted mainly to cheats and solutions”).

The colophons show Xenia publishing The Games Machine at the end of the 1990s, and Wikipedia records that it sold the magazine to Future Media Italy in November 2005.

Sources

  • The Games Machine (Italy) issue 33, July 1991; issue 34, September 1991; issue 35, October 1991: colophons.
  • The Games Machine (Italy) issue 38, January 1992, p. 5: colophon.
  • The Games Machine (Italy) issue 37, December 1991: The Christmas Machine, editorial.
  • TGM Action, year II no. 3, February 1992: editorial by Stefano Gallarini and colophon naming Xenia Edizioni.
  • The Games Machine (Italy), Christmas 1994 special, “Supplemento al numero 70 di The Games Machine”: colophon.
  • The Games Machine (Italy), summer 1998 special, supplement to issue 110: editorial on the special and on PC Force, “la nuova testata della Xenia Edizioni”.
  • The Games Machine (Italy) issue 119, May 1999: Xenia Edizioni named in the magazine.
  • Zzap! (Italy) issues 58 to 60, July to October 1991: colophons; issue 84, December 1993: “Game Over”, the closing editorial, including Fabio Rossi’s recollection.
  • Wikipedia, “Newsfield” (web, secondary): voluntary liquidation in September 1991. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsfield
  • Wikipedia, “The Games Machine (Italy)” (web, secondary): the sale to Future Media Italy in November 2005. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Games_Machine_(Italy)

See also

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