Yahoo's listings for gaming publications may be dense with well-funded competition, but IDG thinks there's still room for another, and on Wednesday announced its own gaming conglomerate, the IDG Games Network. Consolidating content from its numerous gaming titles, IDG hopes to compete with the GameSpots and GameCenters to tap those lucrative gaming audiences.
"We already have strong brands in the gaming space, primarily in our print titles, and we haven't really leveraged those online," explains Thomas Gewecke, publisher of online services for PC World. "This is the first time we're creating an online product that reflects that."
The IDG Games Network will bring together the online offerings from gaming titles PC Games Online, GamePro Online, PC World Online Games Channel, The Web Magazine Online, and TipWorld. While much of the content currently offered online is essentially repurposed from IDG's magazines, the new network will offer additional daily gaming news, reviews, previews, and interactivity; only 30 percent of the site content will be drawn from the magazines.
IDG's current gaming sites draw about 3 million page-views a month - and the company expects that to quickly double with the network launch on 1 December. Additionally, it's adding a six-person staff to produce daily content, and plans to let readers contribute their own hardware and software reviews.
The gaming industry certainly isn't hurting for content right now: Sites like Happy Puppy, GameSpot and VideoGameSpot, GameCenter and Imagine Network pull in millions of visitors on a regular basis and all report strong advertising revenues. Most sites have been doing this for more than a year; some have been doing it for several. All want to cash in on the online gaming industry that Jupiter projects will be worth more than US$1.6 billion by 2000.
"I would never count IDG out, but we've been doing it for a year and a half. If they had wanted to do this, they should have done it ages ago," said Jonathon Epstein, publisher of the GameSpot sites, which boast 1.3 million monthly visitors and have 20 editors. "That's the battlefield, and we'll take them on in that arena."
But IDG thinks it can differentiate itself by focusing heavily on hardware rather than software, and believes that since it offers 200 different publications in 52 countries, it'll have a more global reach.
"It's not about who has the most hits; it's about who offers the best experience for the readers," explains IDG president Kelly Conlin. "IDG invests more than $300 million in editorial content every year.... All of that gives us an advantage in scale and scope. This is not a Mom-and-Pop operation."
