According to an announcement, Harris has acquired publishing rights and trademarks to EGM, with plans to restart the print publication in the second half of this year.

Harris calls the relaunch of Electronic Gaming Monthly a "welcome opportunity to continue delivering quality content to gaming enthusiasts," saying the new EGM team has "exciting plans for the evolution of what will once again be a leading independent voice for the gaming community."

The mag has the enthusiastic, but not necessarily financial backing of Ziff Davis.

"We are pleased that EGM is now in the hands of its original creator, Steve Harris, and wish him and the publication the best of success in the future," says Ziff CEO Jason Young.

The press release states that we'll hear more about the new EGM at next week's E3 expo. For now, a placeholder site featuring the announcement, with links to the resuscitated mag's Twitter and Facebook accounts resides at EGMnow.com.

"ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY" FOUNDER EXECUTES CONTRACT TO ACQUIRE PRINT AND ONLINE PUBLISHING RIGHTS TO EGM MAGAZINE [EGM - thanks, Anthony!]

1UP editor Jeremy "Toastyfrog" Parish announced that the former online-only magazine—annual print collection notwithstanding—will be changing formats, with new issues due every three months. Expect less of a focus on video game news and something more along the lines of the quarterly literary journal McSweeney's "but without as much ironic post-hipsterism."

Parish, who contributed to print publications like EGM and GMR, and continues to contribute to the Retronauts podcast and blog, writes on the GameSpite blog how the magazine came to be.

When I was first hired at 1UP, I was excited to have steady work, sure... but I was even more enthusiastic about the fact that I'd be working at the company responsible for the last few American game magazines worth reading. I'd always wanted to be a published author, and working with GMR, EGM, OPM et al. gave me that opportunity. Needless to say, I watched the magazines die one by one with grim disappointment, and when they finally pulled the plug on EGM I was crushed.

On the seemingly backwards evolution of online to print, Parish explains.

I miss the substance of physical media, and I miss single looming deadlines, and I miss pages of content without animated roadblock-style Flash ads bordering them. No one's going to make a profit publishing a game magazine, but I realized we can do it here without a loss, and that's good enough. I mean, I already make a living doing online game writing for a company that has no interest in taking us into print, and this site already has lots of great content that will eventually be bundled into collected print volumes. So we've decided to reverse the process a little and do print first: thus, GameSpite Quarterly, Issue 1.

Parish says that GameSpite Quarterly will be, in part, based on the format of the Japanese enthusiast mag Continue. Expect issues to be about 150 pages in length and run $10 (or a little more).

GameSpite Issue 14 has been cancelled [GameSpite]