Further developments regarding the sale of IGN, as J2 Global’s Ziff Davis is apparently going to purchase the IGN Entertainment division, owned by News Corp, for less than its asking price of $100 million according to AllThingsD.
The interesting part is that once this deal goes through – which it will, since Ziff Davis made a cash offer according to PanoDaily – 1UP will be back to its original owner.
Ziff Davis sold 1UP to UGO Entertainment in 2009, which was picked up by IGN in 2011. IGN though, was purchased by News Corp back in 2005 for $650 million. Before you say, “Wow, what a loss”, consider the irony of 1UP going back to its original company.
Of course, Ziff Davis will also own GameSpy, AskMen, GameStats and the Vault Network among other entities when it purchases IGN. How will this impact the flow of content and competition? As always, time will tell. At least things will hopefully be more stable at IGN going forward.
Source: GIBiz