| Type | Division of News Corporation[1] |
|---|---|
| Founded | September 1996 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Key people | Roy Bahat (President and General Manager) Peer Schneider (Senior Vice President for Content and Publisher) |
| Industry | Video game journalism |
| Owner | News Corporation |
| Employees | 15 |
| Parent | News Corporation |
| Subsidiaries | AskMen GameSpy Industries GameStats |
| Website | IGN.com |
| Alexa rank | 310 (July 2011[update])[2] |
| Registration | Free IGN Insider Founder's Club |
| Available in | English, German |
| Current status | Active |
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment. Videogame-related channels include PC Games, Wii, Nintendo DS, Nintendo DSi, Nintendo 3DS, iPhone, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, Xbox Live, Wireless, Retro, and Android games.
IGN's corporate parent is IGN Entertainment, which owns and controls separate sites, such as GameSpy, GameStats, VE3D, TeamXbox, Vault Network, FilePlanet and AskMen.
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Created in September 1996 as the Imagine Games Network, IGN was founded by publishing executive Jonathan Simpson-Bint and began as five individual websites within Imagine Publishing: N64.com (later renamed ign64.com), PSXPower, Saturnworld, Next-Generation.com and Ultra Game Players Online. In 1998, the network consolidated the individual sites as system "channels" under the IGN brand. Next-Generation and Ultra Game Players Online were not part of this consolidation; U.G.P.O. dissolved with the cancellation of the magazine, and Next-Generation was put "on hold" when Imagine decided to concentrate on launching the short-lived Daily Radar brand. Then-parent company Snowball.com held an IPO in 2000, which subsequently bombed with the burst of the dot-com bubble.
In June 2005, IGN claimed to have 24,000,000 unique visitors per month, with 4.8 million registered users through all departments of the site. IGN is ranked among the top 200 most-visited websites according to Alexa.[3] In September 2005, IGN was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's multi-media business empire, News Corporation, for $650 million.[4] Currently, the IGN website contains categories that include music, TV and film related topics.
IGN celebrated its 10th anniversary on January 12, 2008.[5]
IGN was headquartered in the Marina Point Parkway office park in Brisbane, California, until it relocated to a smaller office building near AT&T Park in San Francisco on March 29, 2010.
On May 25, 2011, IGN sold its Direct2Drive division to Gamefly for an undisclosed amount.[6]
In 2011, IGN received a Guiness World Record award for the most visited video-game website.
The role-playing video game interest website Vault Network was acquired by IGN in 1999.[7]
GameStats, a review aggregation website, was founded by IGN in 2002. GameStats includes a "GPM" (Game Popularity Meter) rating system which incorporates an average press score, average gamer score as well as the number of page hits for the game.
The Xbox interest site TeamXbox , and the PC game website VE3D were acquired in 2003.[8][9]
In 2005 IGN Entertainment merged with GameSpy Industries,[10] the merger also brought the game download site FilePlanet into the IGN group; as of 2011 both FilePlanet, and the GameSpy website still operate as a video game related web sites.
IGN Entertainment acquired the online male lifestyle magazine AskMen.com in 2005.
A member of the IGN staff writes a review for a game and gives it a score between 0 and 10, which is assigned by increments of 0.1 and determines how much the game is recommended. The score is given according to the individual aspects of a game, like presentation, graphics, sound, gameplay and lasting appeal. Each game is given a score in each of these categories, but the overall score for the game is an independent evaluation, not an average of the scores in each category.[11]
IGN rarely gives a game a score of 10. During the 1990s, IGN awarded 10s to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64,[12] Link's Awakening DX for the Game Boy Color, Pokémon Gold and Silver for Game Boy Color,[13] Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow for Game Boy, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages for the Game Boy Color,[14][15] Sonic the Hedgehog: Pocket Adventure for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, Soulcalibur for the Dreamcast, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe for the Game Boy Color,and Dragon Quest 3 for the Game Boy Color. After nearly a decade with no games receiving a 10, in 2008 Grand Theft Auto IV (minus the PC version which received a 9.2) and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots[16] were awarded 10s. In 2010, IGN awarded Super Mario Galaxy 2, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare and Pac-Man Championship Edition DX a perfect 10/10. In 2011, IGN has given Chrono Trigger (Wii) a perfect 10/10 on May 25, 2011[17][18][19] and most recently, IGN gave both Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (PS3) and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii) a perfect 10.[20][21] Also, on November 30, 2011, Epic Games and Chair Entertainment's Infinity Blade II, for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, got a perfect 10 out of 10, making it the first iOS game to receive a perfect score.
IGN UK also gave GTA IV a 10 (this was the first 10 given by IGN UK to a game) as well as Super Mario Galaxy 2.[22][23] In addition, IGN UK gave Halo: Reach a 10/10 while the US gave it 9.5/10, thus making it the first game the UK gave a perfect review that the US did not. To date, IGN has given a total of 32 games a rating of 10 out of 10.[24]
On August 3, 2010, IGN announced that the site would be changing to a new scoring scale. Instead of a 10-point scale, where games are scored in increments of 0.1, all future reviews will use a 20-point scale where games are scored in increments of 0.5. The scoring change is not retroactive: all scores on reviews written prior to the change will remain the same. This change also does not affect the scoring system for reader reviews.
In 2000, Snowball.com purchased an E-federation called the Internet Wrestling Organization (IWO).[25] Since Snowball owned both IWO and IGN, IWO would go on to become IGN's first official E-Fed, even doing a column on the website. IGN For Men: This section officially closed down on October 2, 2001. It is no longer updated. IGN has sites such as IGN Stars and AskMen.com that fulfill much of the function of the old IGN For Men site. IGN Wrestling met its end in early 2002, when many of the staff departed. Interviews with professional wrestling personalities and coverage of wrestling games has been folded into IGN Sports, currently headed by Jon Robinson. IGN Sci-Fi: Largely dead since 2002, this section of the site included movie news, comic book reviews, anime coverage and other associated items. It has since been discontinued. The site, SciFI.ign.com, now redirects to the recently created SciFiBrain.ign.com, which covers some of the content of the old Sci-Fi site.
In 2002, IGN launched a dedicated videogame FAQs site specifically designed to host user-submitted guides.[26] This was launched following the cancellation of affiliation with GameFAQs.[27] In 2004, IGN launched GameStats, which serves as a more unbiased rating network, as it takes in scores from every corporately owned game rating site and averages them all into one score to give a general idea of the quality of a game. IGN also launched Direct2Drive.com in 2004. Its primary focus is selling digital downloads of full PC and Mac video games, as well as anime, comics and game guides. In 2005, IGN launched its comics site, which is devoted to not just the staple Marvel and DC titles, but also manga, graphic novels, statues and toys.
In 2006, IGN launched its television site. It provides interviews with various television celebrities, in addition to a TV schedule, TV trivia and TV news. Akin to IGN FilmForce, IGN's TV section has a variety of exclusive clips from upcoming television shows. In 2006, IGN launched regional versions of the site based in the UK and Australia, which both share the same information as the American site but with added content authored from editors within each respective region. When visiting IGN.com from either the UK or Australia, the site automatically redirects you to your localised version using geolocation software. Each version of the site has a modified logo with the UK, Australian or American flags beneath the IGN symbol. On May 30, 2006, IGN Dreamcast was restarted; however, none of the Dreamcast updates were posted on the main IGN webpage.
In 2007, IGN launched its anime site. It provided features on anime and manga, including trailers and free episodes. It also included reviews of manga and anime from other sections of IGN, such as IGN Comics and IGN DVD. The anime channel was dropped after IGN redesigned the site. In 2008, IGN launched its Retro channel to mark IGN's 10th anniversary.[28] To coincide with the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, IGN created Super Smash Bros. World Site. On the site, people can submit their user created stages from the game and download ones made by other people. IGN subsequently launched a similar website called GTA 'Hood on April 29, 2008, for Grand Theft Auto IV.
On April 1, 2008, IGN released a movie trailer for the hit video game series The Legend of Zelda that prompted many Zelda fans to believe that a live-action motion picture was on the way. Other movie websites reported that IGN was showing the world premiere of the Zelda trailer that day. The supposed release date of the film was April 1, 2009. The trailer had 3.5 million views that day. IGN released a statement the following day stating that the trailer was an elaborate April Fools joke. IGN was flooded with calls and e-mails about the joke but said it was done with good intentions, and to show Nintendo that a Zelda movie could be made and that fans would go see it.[29] In a behind-the-scenes documentary posted the following day, a camera operator stated that they could have cut together a small mini-series with all the footage shot.
On April 1, 2010, IGN made a mock trailer for a possible movie based on the Halo video game series but with an Indian Bollywood theme, which gave away the prank.
On April 1, 2011, another mock trailer was made for a television spin-off of Harry Potter.[30]
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