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Businesses The Media Entertainment Games

IGN/Gamespy Going Public 34

Posted by Zonk from the good-luck dept.
GameDailyBiz has the news that gaming media powerhouse IGN is going public. From the press release: "IGN owners Great Hill partners were recently looking for someone to purchase the company, and then priced IGN for over $800 million dollars. According to Media Metrix, IGN and its sister sites attract over 25 million users a month. This includes GameSpy, RottenTomatoes, FilePlanet, TeamXbox, and VE3D. IGN also provides online gaming technology for hundreds of video game developers."
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IGN/Gamespy Going Public More

IGN/Gamespy Going Public

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  • Whoopty Shit... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ZephyrXero ( 750822 ) <.moc.oohay. .ta. .orexryhpez.> on Thursday July 14, 2005 @06:19PM (#13067713) Homepage Journal
    As if IGN wasn't a crappy enough site already, now we've got the shareholders to put their worthless voices in on it too... Public corporations [thecorporation.com] are a waste of time if you want to do anything more than make money...
    • Amen, socialist brother.

    • Re:Whoopty Shit... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by vertinox ( 846076 )
      now we've got the shareholders to put their worthless voices in on it too...

      So let me get this straight, if one buys enough stock, one might say... Get unbanned on their forums and get ad free downloads on file planet? And maybe ban a few non-stock holders off the planet forums while your at it? Seems like Capitalism works for me!

  • 800 Million dollars? (Score:5, Funny)

    by hobotron ( 891379 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @06:27PM (#13067785)

    Yeah, of annoying flash ads, interrupting full screen ads, html overlay ads, are-you-sure-you-want-to-click-that picture-cause-it-might-be-an-ad ads, 25 million hits because reviews are split over more 10 more million pages than TomsHardware.

    Actually, I salute them for making the internet's first advertisement wildlife preserve.

  • Deja vu (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14, 2005 @06:33PM (#13067828)
    Hold on a second, wasn't this already pulled under the (now deceased ?) company/scam dubbed "Snowball" during the peak of the dot-bomb era?

    Ah, how soon the public forgets. It was a poor choice for a name btw. ;)
    • If I remember correctly, IGN was Snowball. Or owned by Snowball. Or something like that.

      It's a pity that IGN bought out Gamespy. What? You say it was a merger? Hah. Gamespy had the online multiplayer tech that IGN wanted, and got bought out, lock, stock, and barrel. Look at how money-driven Fileplanet has gotten recently? IGN Insider, anyone?

      I miss when game sites were fun, and the internet was free.

    • The dot-com era was the first thing that came to mind. Because a company claims you are worth 800 million, doesn't mean it will draw that amount in shareholder earnings. Just from the brief summary above, it looks as though visitor traffic is playing a large role in the estimated worth of the network. From the overall negative remarks below, to the consideration that the intended audience for such a network organisation are non-tax paying youths; I would second guess before going public. Better to sell it o

  • I agree (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hexghost ( 444585 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @06:43PM (#13067907) Homepage
    IGN is complete shit. Their reviews are worth less than the data that stores them. I'd rather just pay a monkey to hoot and holler and act excited - at least you know the monkey is honest. Their sites are so jam packed full of ads its not even funny. And who gives a f*** what their stupid staff is playing right now?
    Don't even get me started about fileplanet. I don't want to sign up to IGN's marketing system just to get a game patch, and I don't want to pay to do it either.
    I hope IGN gets bought up by someone who promptly fires off the entire staff and turns it into, well, its hard to make it worse, so just fire the staff.

    • Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)

      by aeoo ( 568706 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @06:48PM (#13067944) Journal
      Well said. IGN is a joke. I think it reflects the heavy corporatization of gaming and the overwhelming amount of boring and half-baked knock-offs and promotional games (all the games with the same title as the "popular" movie of the month).

      One can only hope someone remembers what gaming was all about originally.
      • Although in all honesty what major gaming website can't we say this about?
        • As soon as they start taking money for game ads, then all bets about their integrity are off. I prefer the sites that have user reviews on them. The thing with that is, I have to have trust that the reviews are uncensored and unedited/uncut.

          So yea, I am affraid I agree with you?
          • Why, exactly? I've seen people say this, a lot, but I've yet to see a reason why? I'm not saying IGN is great (they suck), but so what if they take ads? They have to make money somehow. And (at least on GameSpot), I've yet to see their reviews altered by said ads. I once ran into an interstitial ad at gamespot for an EA game just before going to the game's review, which was harsh, and gave it around 5.6, which is hardly a good review. So what more do you want? Besides, in gamespot if you pay the $30 fee for
            • Some companies pressure reviewers into giving favourable reviews to their hyped games by threatening to give them no more exclusives, previews, etc. Of course they don't do it for every game, just the highly anticipated ones. Remember the Driv3r debacle? Atari said "You can be the first to review our highly anticipated new game IF you give it a rating higher than 90%!". The game was buggy as hell and barely deserved 70% but the honest reviewers had to wait until the game hit stores and by that time the earl

              • That's interesting, but you didn't say who actually agreed to give it a high score in exchange for an early review. It's probably some no-name. Gamespot gave Driver a 7.7 [gamespot.com], so it's not them. IGN gave it a 9.7 [ign.com], but the review came out after the game's release, so it doesn't look like they took the deal.

                Also, what is your source?

                • I forgot where I read it and who was involved (I think one was GMR) but looking through Google suggests it's less clear cut than I thought, some dispute it, others believe it. The only hard evidence we have of such behaviour is the threat by Trip Hawkins [gamedrool.com] but that guy is clearly not representative of the game industry.
            • Agreed wrt GameSpot. I've been a GameSpot Complete subscriber for a couple of years and I've been very satisfied with the depth and integrity of the coverage and the available content, including their patch and demo download service, DLX.

              I've never seen evidence of corporate back-handers influencing a review, even on high-profile games. Certainly I do occasionally disagree with a particular point, or sometimes a review in its entirity, but it's always for pragmatic reasons.
          • Correct me if I'm wrong here, but doesn't IGN have user reviews (and scores) under their own scores?
            • "Preferred" just means +1 to the site that does it. IGN for me is like -50 +1 = -49 total score (where negative is bad and positive is good).

              I read IGN with a very cynical eye as I don't like the vibe it has (like all the crazy ads that block the page), hidden content, lame staff that I can't trust at all, etc.

              In order for me to trust a staffer's review I have to like him/her as a person.

              Sure, IGN finally broke down and added user reviews after every other site had them. That's not enough of a positive
      • In what fantasy world do you live in that gaming has EVER been non-corporate? Do the names Sega, Nintendo, Commodore, Sony, etc. ring any bells with you besides being included in the title of consoles? Hint: they're not orders of ascetic monks.
    • Probally the same people that care Commander Taco is playing World of Warcraft and Lumines or Hemos is playing Golden Sun 2 and Unreal Tournament 2004.

  • cool (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I sure hope this in some way shape or form mages the xbox division stop talking about how amazing Halo 2 is. They sure talk about it enough...like it's the only good game for the system or something...

  • Pedantry (Score:1, Informative)

    by joelpt ( 21056 )
    Write it either $800 million, or 800 million dollars. Pick one and go with it. Commit to your grammar!

  • Why is IGN bad? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by zuivelproduct ( 844705 )
    (I am not associated in any way with metacritic or IGN, this is just my honest opinion)
    I usually go to metacritic.com for reviews of games. They take a lot of reviews from other sites, convert their ratings to a '0 to 100' scale and calculate an average score.
    I've found that these scores reflect my own opinion most of the time (not always).
    Now, IGN's score is usually close to the average score. This indicates to me that they are not very biased at all. And I usually find the reviews themselves to be pret

    • Yeah, I've heard people say IGN is bad/biased so many times, from people that couldn't actually back it up, that I'm inclined to believe it's not true. If IGN was so biased, I think somebody would have produced a good argument by now.

      When I ask for evidence of bias, everyone points to the amount of advertising on IGN, which I agree is annoying, but to bring that up is really just changing the subject. I'd actually be more suspicious of a review site that didn't have so many ads, because I'd question how th

  • While I've never liked IGN's site (for too many reasons to describe, lets just say I share the general consensus), I do like several of their sister sites, such as Rotten Tomatoes and Gamespy (and before the subscriber bullshit, File Planet). While Gamespy certainly has gone down hill as well, it's still the main place I get my gaming news online, Rotten Tomatoes is where I look for a quick synopsis of movie reviews, and File Planet is at the very least where I go to see what's new in the gaming download w

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