If Forbes Says IGNs Growth Flaccid, Where Now For Game Sites?
Via PaidContent, I note there’s a Forbes cover feature on ‘Murdoch 2.0’, discussing the various website-related purchases for Fox, and headed: “MySpace was just the start. Rupert Murdoch and his lieutenants are betting big on the Internet.” However, the business magazine takes a close look at the stats for game (and tech and moves and ‘babes’, nowadays) site IGN, and doesn’t like what it sees: “Murdoch paid $650 million, even more than MySpace, for ign, a collection of Web sites aimed at the electronic lad-mag set. It has underperformed; the number of unique visitors has grown a flaccid 21% over the last 14 months. In the race to exploit the Internet before it ravages his media empire, Murdoch and his lieutenant, Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin, have moved faster than their competitors–which also makes it easy to stumble.” A little further on, there’s some attempted justification for the sluggishness: “Chernin says the company expected the site’s numbers to dip as gamers stopped
