AOL Acquires U.S. Game Site GameDaily

AOL announced today that it has acquired North American consumer and business video game website GameDaily from parent company Gigex, in a deal that closed on August 10th, and for which financial terms were not disclosed. GameDaily, which has existed for a number of years and is claimed to be "one of the top three most visited video gaming information destinations on the Web" in the press statement accompanying the acquisition, combines both the GameDaily consumer site with the GameDaily Biz newsletter. The move shows aggressive and continuing actions from AOL to change its business model from a dial-up ISP business to an advertising-led network such as Yahoo! - for example, it recently acquired Games.com to act as a casual game portal, and also owns video game weblog Joystiq, acquired as part of its acquisition of blog network Weblogs Inc. As part of the deal, GameDaily will become the flagship video games brand within the AOL Games network, and will be united with content and community features currently found on the AOL Video Games website. In addition, the AOL Video Games editorial team will be integrated into the GameDaily editorial staff to create the new GameDaily editorial team. The GameDaily Biz newsletter team will also operate under the newly combined AOL Video Games-GameDaily editorial team. Additionally, certain GameDaily content partnership agreements will be transitioned to AOL. "Video game sites have become a valuable resource for advertisers wishing to reach the young male audience, and GameDaily is a brand that resonates with these highly sought after consumers," said Ralph Rivera, Vice President and General Manager, AOL Games. "We look forward to continuing to serve this audience, maximizing GameDaily content with AOL's community features, and further expanding the AOL Games community."