News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch, has
bought out online gaming network IGN Entertainment in a massive $650 million acquisition. The network runs sites like
Gamespy, Fileplanet, TeamXbox and 3D Gamers and its main target audience is the 18-30 male gamer market. Apparently
Murdoch had some loose change left over after he bought 5 other online sites including MySpace.com. The total
hits/month for News Corp's online presence now reaches over 12 billion hits per month.
IGN CEO Mark Jung will stay on to run the network under its new owners (link courtesy of Murdoch's Fox network, yeah, he owns that too). According to a Financial Times article, Murdoch had previously been sceptical about going online. But I guess he must believe in it now, he's only gone and set aside a total of $2 Billion for getting his feet into the medium.
It's quite hard to tell what will change at IGN. It's possible that News Corp's extra cash horde will mean less advertisements on the usually graphically rich site. The content certainly won't change. News Corp bought IGN to do exactly what they were always doing; report on games. The only difference will be that the reporting will be under Mr. Murdoch's name. So, what's your opinion?
[Thanks, Fuzz]
