History

The magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 was conceived by TP Media. Ireland's large PlayStation adoption rate and the greatly increased prices of imported UK publications at the time were contributing factors in launching such a magazine. The Official UK PlayStation Magazine published by Future Publishing

Future Publishing

Future plc is a media company; in 2006, it was the sixth-largest in the United Kingdom. It publishes more than 150 magazines in fields such as video games, technology, automotive, cycling, films and photography. Future is the official magazine company of all three major games console manufacturers...

 could cost up to £9.99 IEP

IEP

IEP can mean multiple things:* Individualized Education Program* International Energy Program* Institut d'études politiques, a group of French university faculties concentrating mainly but not exclusively on political science...

 due to Irish import fees.

OIPM launched for £4.99 with a demo

Game demo

A game demo is a freely distributed demonstration or preview of an upcoming or recently released video game. Demos are typically released by the game's publisher to help consumers get a feel of the game before deciding whether to buy the full version....

 disc

Optical disc

In computing and optical disc recording technologies, an optical disc is a flat, usually circular disc which encodes binary data in the form of pits and lands on a special material on one of its flat surfaces...

.

Differences between the UK version

Although the first three issues of the magazine had the same cover as the UK magazine, OIPM's content was original and written by a team in Ireland, headed by Kevin MacDermot. Certain features were directly taken from the UK version. The magazine's A-Z section was also taken from the UK version, although all future entries were based on OIPM's reviews, not the UK ones.