• by Shankar Gupta , March 17, 2006

The 1UP network, which runs the video game news and review site 1UP.com, and publishes gaming magazines like Computer Gaming World and Electronic Gaming Monthly, will later this month launch a site dedicated to hosting online streaming video of games.

The site, GameVideos.com--now in closed beta testing--will host both videos provided by developers, and videos created and submitted by its users. "We saw there was a huge demand for video among our users," said 1UP Spokesman Jason Freidenfelds. "Gamers are heavy broadband users, and they want to see videos of games, funny videos that have to do with games--they want to see interviews with the game developers, and they want to be able to submit their own videos."

When the site launches March 27, it will host nearly 2,000 professional and user-created videos. The videos will include previews of games, machinima (short videos that feature characters and scenes from the game, with new audio overdubbed), and user-submitted "extreme" gameplay, such as a very fast completion of an entire game, or a particularly difficult feat of gameplay.

GameVideos.com's team of editors also will seek out professional videos. "Anytime there's a hot game video, our editors will be on the lookout for it," Freidenfelds said. "They'll take user-submitted videos, but they'll also go out and grab them. It's not just a bucket of videos, it's an actively culled and selected set of videos."

The site will be ad-supported, with standard leaderboards and MPUs, along with video ads prerolling on all the video content. Additionally, the GameVideos.com site will host longer-form content, including their own half-hour show that currently runs on their main site, 1Up.com--The 1Up Show. Those shows will host regular, TV-style commercials during their 30-minute runtimes.

1Up.com is currently battling two major competitors in the game news and reviews space--News Corp.'s IGN.com and CNET's Gamespot.com--and a new arrival just launched this month: GamesRadar.com, a site owned by Future US, launched on March 1.

Freidenfelds said that the GameVideos.com launch was intended to increase traffic for the 1Up Network, but that the leaders in the space, IGN and GameSpot, would be tough to beat. "They're huge, and they're going to grow as well, so I don't think we're going to hit number one this year," he said. "But we're looking to be a strong number three, so when an advertiser thinks 'I need to reach the gamer demographic,' they think of us."