IGN and Gamespy merger

[Lhadatt]

IGN and GameSpy Announce Merger Agreement

Combination Will Create Web's Largest Network of Gaming Destination Sites

SAN FRANCISCO and IRVINE, Calif. - December 4, 2003 - IGN Entertainment - home to IGN.com, the Web's largest gaming and entertainment destination for young males - and GameSpy Industries, a leading online entertainment and technology company serving game enthusiasts and game developers, today announced that they have signed a definitive merger agreement creating the Web's largest network of destination sites for gamers.

The combination will create the Internet's largest gaming audience and its highest traffic PC and console game content network with 673 million page views per month. According to comScore NetScore data, the two networks attract more than 22 million unduplicated unique visitors per month worldwide, and they rank number one in unduplicated U.S. audience reach with both comScore Media Metrix and Nielsen//NetRatings in the gaming information category.

Additionally, the combined companies service the biggest gaming information subscription base with 194,000 active paying subscribers and have registered over 26 million users. They also operate the highest volume download service with 6.1 million downloads per month and are the industry leader in online gaming tools and services.

"This combination offers tremendous synergies as GameSpy and IGN have very complementary strengths," said Mark Jung, IGN's CEO. "GameSpy is the market leader with the PC game audience, game downloads and online gaming technology. IGN is the market leader with the console game audience and in community services such as message boards. Both companies have very strong subscription acquisition and retention programs."

Each company's customer base should find advantages with this strategic grouping. Gaming and consumer advertisers will be able to reach the world's largest concentration of young males - predominately the key 18 - 34 year old male demographic - addressing the recent decline of male TV viewership. GameSpy's game developer clients will have expanded access to the large IGN audience for game demos and beta testing. Video game enthusiasts will benefit from the combined efforts of two leading editorial teams, who together generate an average of over 4,400 pieces of original gaming content per month.


"Combining IGN and GameSpy will create value for both our audience and our clients," said Mark Surfas, founder and chairman of GameSpy. "For the gamer, this merger will provide the broadest array of information, services and content choices. For game publishers and advertisers, it creates a platform with the widest reach and the deepest set of marketing tools to target gamers and young men in general."

Mr. Jung will serve the new company as CEO, and Mr. Surfas will serve as the Chief Strategy Officer and will join Mr. Jung on the Board of Directors. Because of their distinct audiences and strong loyalties, both the IGN.com and GameSpy.com brands will be retained. The companies expect to complete the merger in the first half of 2004.


About IGN Entertainment
IGN Entertainment, through its IGN.com® network, is the Internet's leading information and entertainment destination for teen and young adult gamers. IGN serves its audience by providing both free and subscription-based content, services and gameplay. IGN offers its business customers a full spectrum of integrated marketing solutions to reach this large Web-centric audience, including fixed placement and impression-based advertising, sponsorships, permission marketing, custom publishing, e-commerce, direct e-mail marketing and content licensing. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, with sales offices in New York and Los Angeles. For more information, please visit http://www.ign.com.

About GameSpy Industries
GameSpy is the Web's leading destination for online information, entertainment and communities serving the enthusiast gamer worldwide. The GameSpy network includes GameSpy.com, FilePlanet.com and GameSpyArcade.com, more than 60 Planet community sites and 7,000+ hosted sites. GameSpy is also the leading provider of technology for online game play in video games and has the largest gaming information subscriber base on the Web. Founded in 1995, privately held GameSpy is headquartered in Irvine, Calif. www.gamespy.com.

I know we have some Gamespy folk here -- maybe even some IGN people. Do any of you care to comment?

[Rumpy]

26 million registered users and they only have 194,000 paying subscribers combined? That's pretty shitty.

[piku]

Wow. Lowtax on SomethingAwful actually broke this news a few weeks ago, but he didnt specify/didnt know who purchased them.

IGN bought them for $60 million BTW.

[Makaze]

The $60 million price tag is bullshit. In fact, its overinflated by many hundred percents. Sadly, we will never be able to disclose how much we purchased it for -- part of the agreement.

But I promise you this; it was nowhere near that crazy $60 million mark. Not even close.

[bbobb]

IGN won't be cleaning out any Gamespy writers will they? I'd hate to see BenT and ferricide jobless.

[Makaze]

From what we've been told, the sites will remain seperate editorially. We'll just be owned by one fat parent company (which is still tentatively called IGN Entertainment)

[bbobb]

Ahhh... I see.
Well it's just business as usual then.

[piku]

o rly


I guess the $20 million going into Surfas' pockets is inflated too then? Actually its probably better that way, even fathoming $60 mil for that site is enough to cause headaches.



(edit: oh I see what happened now, that $60 mil figure is what ZDNet was going to put up, but when that fell through they just merged with IGN)

[Drinky Milk]

Most recently, I think IGN has been going for style over substance, I still frequent their site often, because they are one of the few websites I went to back when I started browsing the internet. Obviously, a lot has changed since then, but I enjoy reading alot of their archived reviews, and comparing their opinions then, and now.

Gamespy is great too, and I think this merger will actually benefit them both. Maybe they will have enough money to stop making US pay to read their silly reviews.

[Mzo]

They were better as IGN64