When I first began to research the arcade industry around 2005, there were two trade magazines that I had access to for putting together my business plan. One of those was Play Meter Magazine, a publication that has been around since 1974. One of the most useful collections of data that they published were the State of the Industry reports; these involved a survey of their subscribers to gather information on the status and health of the industry on an annual basis. They have not published a new report since Feb. 2016, which is unfortunate. Their presence on social media since then has also been infrequent as of late, apart from the occasional e-mail newsletter.
Today, I received a press release stating that the publisher for Play Meter Magazine, Carol P. Lally, is announcing her retirement and “the subsequent close of the periodical that has faithfully served the coin machine industry for 44 and a half years.” Jumping to the end of the PR, it should be noted that “At present negotiations are ongoing for a possible new future for Play Meter,” but we’ll have to wait and see what that entails.
In the interests of disclosure, I have been a writer for the competition, Replay Magazine, since 2011 or so. In all that time, I’ve never gotten the impression that there was any sort of deep rivalry between the two magazines; it has always seemed like there was plenty of room for both to operate. Then again, maybe there was and I just wasn’t aware of it
Either way, it’s sad to hear and I hope that they will be able to figure something out.  While I have never met Carol, I want to thank her and the PM staff for the efforts over so many years. Continuing to do print in

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