Magazine in pdf-format - is it needed?

I would like to appeal to habravchanam and anyone interested in electronic entertainment, video games and just magazines. The fate of one small project that is important to us and (possibly) interesting for someone depends on your opinion.

I'll start with a little story, I will try not to tire you. A couple of years ago, my friend and comrade Rabik ( send all the minuses to karma to him :-) the idea to create a magazine about electronic entertainment visited. The motive - gaming magazines that were on sale at the time, were, in fact, a waste of money. The quality of the texts is not at a high level (it is understandable, if the author is paid for the number of characters), the DVD was a squeeze of what can be obtained on the Internet, while the price of publications only sought upwards. They decided to position the magazine as a collection of articles by ordinary gamers, those who like to play games and use gadgets during their free time from work / study and are ready to express their own opinion about their quality. Nobody had the money, of course (hungry students), so the pdf format and the free e-magazine at that time seemed like the ideal choice.
')
Yes, each author had his own style of communication with readers, someone wrote texts terribly (offered help and typical "students", but professional editors who are ready to help for free, no), someone is good, someone is large, was limited to a couple of paragraphs. But it was great - completely different people came together to try themselves in something new.

Several trial editions were released, with errors both in design, and in layout, and in texts. To our joy, with each number the quality gradually grew, and the kindergarten magazine turned into something more meaningful. Then the participants had a difficult time, many left to write materials "for the soul." Another year passed, we decided to try again, in a slightly different composition.

The result in the picture, I do not give a link to the site (so that no one would think that PR). It is convenient to read the journal through a browser on issuu.com (I advise you to enable Fullscreen).

But

All this is fine, but. At one point, we realized that, in principle, the forces that go into creating one issue, design, layout and some kind of editing, do not pay off the number of readers of several thousand and almost no earnings. These results did not greatly influence the desire to improve the quality and try further, but it is important to know your opinion about our project in particular and pdf journals in general.

• Will the format of pdf magazines take root? Will serious editions ever publish glossy magazines in free access or pdf format? Is it profitable?
• And the main question for us is: is the magazine interesting, should we continue?

PS Of course, if someone is interested in the project, if someone is willing to help with printing, has interesting suggestions, then of course write :)

PPS Please do not take the text of the chief editor on the front pages seriously.

upd: transferred to the "Games" blog.