IGN Plans UK, Australian Game Site Expansion

Author: by David Jenkins, Simon Carless

Consumer video game website firm IGN Entertainment, now part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, is investing heavily in game editorial and sales resources outside the United States, revealing plans to open new UK and Australian portals, according to two separate reports. Former G4TV editorial director Justin Keeling is reportedly heading up the company's UK division, which has announced via a website posting that: "Next month IGN is launching a dedicated office in London, England, and we're looking for full-time writers to join our rapidly expanding UK launch team." In addition, speaking to The Australian newspaper, IGN director David Chang indicated that an Australian launch was now a priority, following the launch of the dedicated British site. "For IGN we think Australia is very much a key market," Chang said. "Australia ranks highly in terms of page views - 10 million - and is the number two market outside of the U.S." Each channel will apparently include game news, features, previews, reviews, and event reports which are specific to the area in question, and visitors reaching IGN's website from that particular part of the world will likely be automatically redirected to that hub. In a similar move, the CNET Entertainment-owned GameSpot has recently established a UK office and started providing UK-targeted editorial, with regional traffic redirecting to the GameSpot UK hub to be provided apparently suitable editorial material. Chang also commented on some IGN-related stats of interest, claiming: “Across our readership globally the average household income is US$67,000. The average reader spent US$900 on consumer products in the past six months. These guys are super consumers and they are influencers." Although traditionally, major websites such as IGN and GameSpot have relied on a centralized U.S. website, the new generation has seen a new interest in regionalized content, largely due to the unmonetized or incorrectly targeted traffic seeing U.S.-targeted ad campaigns by visiting the site from outside the region. The companies hope to compete with local-targeted websites such as the UK's Eurogamer by providing regional content and competing for those regional ad spends.