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When it came to finding a way around these pesky guards that were blocking the path to the mission's goal – or discovering that hidden gem hidden in the caves of the Forbidden Mountain – it was common for players to come out the Prima game guide for tips. Well, you will soon find that such a tradition will no longer be possible.
In the spring of 2019, Prima Games will close, putting an end to its illustrious career after nearly 30 years of activity. Publishers Weekly reports that the US company will immediately stop ordering new strategy guides, but that the doors will not officially close until next year. At this point, its four main offices will cease operations, including those in California and New York. The Roseville office will close first before the end of November, while the Indiana office will remain open to complete all remaining projects until March 2019.
The article points out that the guide production company was created in 1990, with video games becoming a nascent force in the entertainment industry. At that time, the sector was recovering from the crash of 1983, caused by a deluge of poor quality securities and a market flooded with floods of greed.
Some players might think that the current industry is not very far from the one of 1983, the anticipated access being an important source of income for some developers, and almost all the games which leave have a sort of aggressive cash-shop, a loot box, or a microtransaction model added for good measure.
Nevertheless, Prima has found its way to success by navigating into a niche of supply and demand that no other company was ready to tackle at the time. Games became more and more complex in 1990 because of rapidly emerging technological advances – the 16 – bit era was beginning, and some companies were going off the beaten track to create games.
We have seen the fascination of the FMV subgenre appear; we've seen point-and-click games coming out of textual adventures and becoming graph-based games; we have seen that racing games are not limited to the desire to learn turns and master the brakes; and side-scrollers began to dabble in several routes and the need to solve complex puzzles.
The 90s have probably been the most innovative decade of all games. A host of genres have sprung up, thanks to all the new technologies discovered and exploited on a large number of gaming platforms, ranging from 16-bit systems like Genesis and SNES to 32-bit add-ons such as 32X and PSX. , to FMV-compatible machines such as 3DO and Sega-CD, and possibly to 64-bit beasts such as the N64.
All the while, Prima was cleaning up all this innovation – because if you wanted to know how to complete a game, you were watching the GamePro TV show, you were taking Tips & Tricks magazine or you were buying such a Prima Strategy Guide. The company covered everything from Sonic the hedgehog at Fall at King's Quest and everything else in between.
Unfortunately, this success could not be maintained in the era of livestreams and Let's Plays. Twitch.tv and YouTube now contain all kinds of strategy guides and step-by-step procedures for more games than Prima can follow. Thus, in the same way that the company capitalized on all the amazing technology focus during what many consider to be the golden age of the game, the same thirst for new interactive entertainment forms and have also paved the way for the disappearance of Prima.
The CEO of Prima's parent company, Ian Hudson, acknowledged that the evolving landscape of technology left Prima untouched to remain profitable in the current generation of games. Nevertheless, players will always remember that Prima was the best place to discover some of the most complete procedures on the market.
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