Prima Games Closing Its Doors After 28 Years of Helping Gamers With Its Strategy Guides

[GTPNewsWire]

This is the discussion thread for a recent post on GTPlanet:

Prima Games Closing Its Doors After 28 Years of Helping Gamers With Its Strategy Guides

This article was published by Joe Donaldson (@Joey D) on November 11th, 2018 in the Gaming category.

 

[Northstar]

I remember always trying to convince my mom to buy me the guides along with the game, I don't recall it ever working.

Once I got a job though I remember buying them on a fairly regular basis, they were life savers in the days of dial up internet! Sad to see them go, but at the same time I'm also shocked that they've made it this long.

 

[JohnBM01]

I recently found my Gran Turismo 2 strategy guide. And guess who made it? Right- Prima Games! Sad to hear of Prima Games shutting down after providing their knowledge to gamers with their guides. Surely lots of thanks should be handed to Prima Games for their long time of providing gaming guides.

 

[sesselpupser]

at the same time I'm also shocked that they've made it this long

Same here, I remember using GameFAQs over a decade ago to great effect and Steam's community guides, YouTube and random Google results since. Nothing can beat a book for quick reference, but I personally love discovering how a game works for myself and fall back on guides if I get stuck or can't be bothered to hunt collectibles. Spending money on a comprehensive guide when all I really want is an occasional nudge or an annotated screenshot of a map never appealed to me.

That said, a friend of mine always bought guides for any game he was excited for, removing the thrill of discovery never really made sense to me especially as he had the guides for all the Final Fantasy games, then again there's so much to miss in those games I suppose it made sense.

 

[UKMikey]

Sign of the times I guess. I always preferred Piggyback guudes anyway.

 

[Northstar]

Same here, I remember using GameFAQs over a decade ago to great effect and Steam's community guides, YouTube and random Google results since. Nothing can beat a book for quick reference, but I personally love discovering how a game works for myself and fall back on guides if I get stuck or can't be bothered to hunt collectibles. Spending money on a comprehensive guide when all I really want is an occasional nudge or an annotated screenshot of a map never appealed to me.

That said, a friend of mine always bought guides for any game he was excited for, removing the thrill of discovery never really made sense to me especially as he had the guides for all the Final Fantasy games, then again there's so much to miss in those games I suppose it made sense.

I mostly played racing and sports games during the time I bought guides so there really wasn't a story to spoil, plus if you were like me and didn't know the finer details it helped to get the fundamentals down. Plus with racing games it was nice to see specs on cars without having to go through menu's and loading screens.

The only story based one I recall having was for San Andreas.

 

[Goetz]

What game is shown in the guide in the Picture?

 

[Castrol96]

I still have my Prima guides on GT3 and 4 as collector pieces.

 

[austindeckerGT5]

Well **** I just bought their Fallout 76 guide on amazon about 2 weeks ago. Sad to see them go honestly. Yes online guides are all over the place but most of the time they aren't helpful until a week after the game releases where these guides contain everything day one.

 

[PocketZeven]

I wonder if piggyback will survive...

 

[Crazy Taylor]

I still use my Skyrim strategy guide when playing on Ps4. Also had GTA5 and GTA:SA strategy guides as well.

 

[Corsa]

I wonder if value on the older ones will increase as a possible collectors item in the future.

 

[Joey D]

What game is shown in the guide in the Picture?

Per the Facebook post its Dissidia Final Fantasy.

 

[DesertPenguin]

Anyone remember this? I might still have it in a closet. It was a great help but came out before any DLC so it didn't have Spa or Motegi but was still a nice read before an event to freshen up on a track.

 

[danimac]

My first guide was Operation Flash Point on PC the guide came with the game.
Yep, very sad to see them go!
But no one wants to pay for them when you can google everything you want to know, or just watch a YouTube video for free.

 

[DK]

I'm sure I have a couple of guides they did for mid-2000s Pokemon games buried under a crap-ton of notebooks somewhere...

 

[EngieDiesel]

I still have my Skyrim and Fallout: New Vegas guides on the bookshelf. Sure all the info in them could be pulled off the internet, but there's just something satisfying about having these encyclopedia-sized tomes to look up things in.

Also, looking through a print book is much easier than clicking through 50+ pages on IGN that even my weapons grade adblocker can't fully sanitize.

 

[davidt33]

Those game guides were a must for me. I remember them well. Almost every game I ordered I ordered or bought one of the guides too....and they came in quite handy. Matter of fact I still have some from years ago just there for posterity.

Sorry to see them close but with the advent of the internet and how easily you can get any guide or walkthrough and then some online I was wondering myself how come they were managing to remain open. Guess it was just a matter of time.

 

[TTM]

Nooo!!! Another part of my childhood dies. 🤬
I still have that Gran Turismo 5 book they made. Helped me back in the day, though it was funny to me in some of the guides for the track to tune the gear ratios, considering you could only tune final drive back at the time.
Paying my respects
F

 

[Interstellar9]

The legendary strategy guide for TES IV: Oblivion. I loved it. Every. Page. Of. It.
Sad to see them going into oblivion (mad pun intended).

I wonder if piggyback will survive...

They recently brought the strategy guide for Red Dead Redemption II. I got it here (Collector's Edition). It's fantastic. They also did a great job with the MGS V: TPP strategy guide.

Nooo!!! Another part of my childhood dies. 🤬
I still have that Gran Turismo 5 book they made. Helped me back in the day, though it was funny to me in some of the guides for the track to tune the gear ratios, considering you could only tune final drive back at the time.
Paying my respects
F

I never knew that they made books for Gran Turismo. Interesting to see that there are strategy guides for GT

 

[Famine]

Interesting to see that there are strategy guides for GT

We made one for GT6...

https://www.gtplanet.net/product-category/books/

 

[baldgye]

I think they really missed a trick. The collectors edition guides are really nice and if they'd managed to work it so that they became a guide/artbook/collectors edition publication they could have kept going.

The artbooks in most games are largely garbage, A3 little postcard collections barely worth printing.

 

[Robin]

I never once bought a 'Prima' strategy guide. I preferred the ones which were serialised across maybe 2 or 3 issues in normal gaming magazines like OPSM and PSM2.

 

[huiop2]

Does that mean they will shut down their servers? What will happen to their online guides?

 

[BuckFly]

I have a couple of Halo collector guides and, oh man...thank you Resident Evil 4 Guide!

 

[JoeDaSnow]

I had four guides from this publisher but discarded them because I didn't need them anymore.That was bad omen to me. So does this publisher and it's a shame.

 

[zzz_pt]

I think I got the GT4 guide from them.

 

[Salty66]

Had the Test Drive Unlimited guide.