Topic: IGN up for sale

[TJ Spyke]

It's being reported that News Corporation is working with investment bank Allen & Co. to sell IGN (after a year of failing to find buyers). The Wall Street Journal (which is also owned by News Corp.) expects IGN to be sold for $100 million (come on NWR, you have that kind of money, ). This is far less than the $650 million News Corp. paid for it back in 2005. Don't forget that News Corp. also bought Myspace for $580 million in 2005 and sold it last year for only $35 million. Some of the interested parties include Break Media (which owns break.com and ScreenJunkies) and SAY Media (which owns sites like Dogster).
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http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-10-16-ign-going-up-for-auction?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=us-daily

[Fatty The Hutt]

That site has really gone downhill, IMO.
Guess the business valuators agree.

[MegaByte]

Who wants to do a Kickstarter to buy it? 

[ShyGuy]

IGN destroyed itself by putting out low value content.  They need to fire the majority of people working there and start over.

[ThePerm]

Who wants to do a Kickstarter to buy it? 

actually with NWR's clout, I think it could be pulled off. I'm in lol.  we could make a division thats me, blacknmild, stogi, and easycure

[Louieturkey]

Who wants to do a Kickstarter to buy it? 

actually with NWR's clout, I think it could be pulled off. I'm in lol.  we could make a division thats me, blacknmild, stogi, and easycure

Shinji could run the Microsoft section.  He'd need an editor though as I'd be afraid of the articles he'd write with his smart phone.

[Shaymin]

Who wants to do a Kickstarter to buy it?  : :

I'd chip in.

Stretch goal: We fire anyone who's ever been featured on @igndotcom, or at least the one responsible for "Our frothing demand for this game increases".

(Though I'd probably fire that guy + the guy who decided to kill PSP coverage, merge the rest of them into 1up and shut the whole thing down.)

[MagicCow64]

I've been wondering what the hell the Wii/WiiU guys have been doing for two years. No way that's been full time work for quite some time. I think it's pretty clear that having dilineated tribal content channels doesn't make sense at this point.

[BranDonk Kong]

Hopefully News Corp has to sell Faux News soon too, then someone buys it and burns it to the ground.

[TJ Spyke]

LOL, who would have thought the one of the few things Brandogg and I agree on are politics?

[Pixelated Pixies]

For me alot of it had to do with not only low quality content but also with the personalities of the people who headed up the various teams. There are a handful of people working at IGN who actually know what they're talking about and fewer still who come across as likeable. Their coverage and discussion of Nintendo is just embarrassing when compared to the content put out NWR.

[S-U-P-E-R]

IGN has had how many different owners now?

[TJ Spyke]

Just 2, actually. The original owners (who changer their names a few times) from 1995 to 2005, then News Corp. from 2005 to present.

[UncleBob]

Who wants to do a Kickstarter to buy it?  :

While I know this was a joke, perhaps NWR could team up with Sony, Microsoft and PC equivalent  of NWR-esque websites and buy out IGN... that's only $25 Million each.

[S-U-P-E-R]

Just 2, actually. The original owners (who changer their names a few times) from 1995 to 2005, then News Corp. from 2005 to present.

I'm pretty sure there was at least one other. I can't help but think Viacom was one of them...

[AnGer]

I'm pretty sure there was at least one other. I can't help but think Viacom was one of them...

Nope. According to wikipedia, a site named Snowball.com was interested in buying in, but the deal was broken off when they got flushed away after the .com-bubble burst.

[S-U-P-E-R]

I believe the Wikipedia information is incomplete.  From the looks of these articles, Snowball.com actually did own them for a period.

http://www.zdnet.com/news/ign-com-will-buy-the-vault-network/103354
http://news.cnet.com/Snowball.com-makes-modest-debut/2100-12_3-265161.html

And before that, the company actually broke off from Imagine Publishing altogether.

http://vipy.co.uk/ign/2

Looks like I'm always right about everything, as usual

[BranDonk Kong]

Snowball definitely owned IGN for a while, I remember seeing snowball all over IGN back in the GameCube days.

[TJ Spyke]

I think they are still related to IGN somehow, "snowball.com" redirects to IGN's corporate website.

[Do_What]

Poor 1up. Those guys can't win for anything.
IGN has been a disaster for a while. They market to a weird segment of gamers and definitely hit the lowest common denominator thing super hard. Also, their articles are not always well written. Not from a subjective "I don't agree with their review" thing, but in a "this article does not have any consistent flow" and "some major editing needed to be done to this preview" sort of way.
All that said, Murdoch wanting to sell off IGN probably has nothing to do with any of that. It's just that video game reporting sites are sort of losers. Since you can't do any sort of actual investigative work or "hard" journalism or whatever so much of your content is out of their hands. They are at the mercy of publishers. If a website wanted to do things without help from publishers they would end up way behind on everything. They couldn't get previews or early review copies. They wouldn't have access to developers or be able to get help from PR people on any sort of issues.
On top of that the way people consume info is different and some of the major gaming sites might just be a bit too big. If most of your content is just previews and reviews maybe you don't need so many staffers and so much money. You're just publishing videos the publishers sent you anyway.
So it's never really surprising when these sites go down a bit.

[Pixelated Pixies]

 Since you can't do any sort of actual investigative work or "hard" journalism or whatever so much of your content is out of their hands. They are at the mercy of publishers. If a website wanted to do things without help from publishers they would end up way behind on everything. They couldn't get previews or early review copies. They wouldn't have access to developers or be able to get help from PR people on any sort of issues.

On top of that the way people consume info is different and some of the major gaming sites might just be a bit too big. If most of your content is just previews and reviews maybe you don't need so many staffers and so much money. You're just publishing videos the publishers sent you anyway.
So it's never really surprising when these sites go down a bit.

I completely agree. I think that's why I really like Giantbomb, because those guys have deliberately moved away from the traditional previews/reviews/features model and have instead focused on having a voice, putting out great video content and building a community.

[NWR_insanolord]

Poor 1up. Those guys can't win for anything.
IGN has been a disaster for a while. They market to a weird segment of gamers and definitely hit the lowest common denominator thing super hard. Also, their articles are not always well written. Not from a subjective "I don't agree with their review" thing, but in a "this article does not have any consistent flow" and "some major editing needed to be done to this preview" sort of way.
All that said, Murdoch wanting to sell off IGN probably has nothing to do with any of that. It's just that video game reporting sites are sort of losers. Since you can't do any sort of actual investigative work or "hard" journalism or whatever so much of your content is out of their hands. They are at the mercy of publishers. If a website wanted to do things without help from publishers they would end up way behind on everything. They couldn't get previews or early review copies. They wouldn't have access to developers or be able to get help from PR people on any sort of issues.
On top of that the way people consume info is different and some of the major gaming sites might just be a bit too big. If most of your content is just previews and reviews maybe you don't need so many staffers and so much money. You're just publishing videos the publishers sent you anyway.
So it's never really surprising when these sites go down a bit.

Since when has NewsCorp had any desire to do real journalism?

[Fatty The Hutt]

Poor 1up. Those guys can't win for anything.
IGN has been a disaster for a while. They market to a weird segment of gamers and definitely hit the lowest common denominator thing super hard. Also, their articles are not always well written. Not from a subjective "I don't agree with their review" thing, but in a "this article does not have any consistent flow" and "some major editing needed to be done to this preview" sort of way.
All that said, Murdoch wanting to sell off IGN probably has nothing to do with any of that. It's just that video game reporting sites are sort of losers. Since you can't do any sort of actual investigative work or "hard" journalism or whatever so much of your content is out of their hands. They are at the mercy of publishers. If a website wanted to do things without help from publishers they would end up way behind on everything. They couldn't get previews or early review copies. They wouldn't have access to developers or be able to get help from PR people on any sort of issues.
On top of that the way people consume info is different and some of the major gaming sites might just be a bit too big. If most of your content is just previews and reviews maybe you don't need so many staffers and so much money. You're just publishing videos the publishers sent you anyway.
So it's never really surprising when these sites go down a bit.

Well said. I agree with all o this.
I would also get a kind of sick glee out of seeing a few IGN staffers get shitcannned because the parent company realized they don't actually do anything but post regurgitated content.

[CM30]

I think the reason the site's being sold is that it wasn't particularly profitable, I've heard some people say it cost a fortune to run and didn't make enough of it back from advertising.


Of course, much of that's probably due to them trying to expand too quickly and hiring too many people who don't know what they're doing.  Maybe if they cut back a bit the site might both improve the quality of its content and manage to turn a decent profit.

[ShyGuy]

Poor 1up. Those guys can't win for anything.
IGN has been a disaster for a while. They market to a weird segment of gamers and definitely hit the lowest common denominator thing super hard. Also, their articles are not always well written. Not from a subjective "I don't agree with their review" thing, but in a "this article does not have any consistent flow" and "some major editing needed to be done to this preview" sort of way.
All that said, Murdoch wanting to sell off IGN probably has nothing to do with any of that. It's just that video game reporting sites are sort of losers. Since you can't do any sort of actual investigative work or "hard" journalism or whatever so much of your content is out of their hands. They are at the mercy of publishers. If a website wanted to do things without help from publishers they would end up way behind on everything. They couldn't get previews or early review copies. They wouldn't have access to developers or be able to get help from PR people on any sort of issues.
On top of that the way people consume info is different and some of the major gaming sites might just be a bit too big. If most of your content is just previews and reviews maybe you don't need so many staffers and so much money. You're just publishing videos the publishers sent you anyway.
So it's never really surprising when these sites go down a bit.

Since when has NewsCorp had any desire to do real journalism?

Since when does the rule enforcer think he is above the law?

DIRTY INSANOLORDS DON'T THINK THE RULES DONT APPLY TO THEM