• September 9, 2005

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation announced Thursday that it would buy IGN Entertainment, Inc., which owns a host of video game-related properties, for $650 million. The move is the latest in a series of News Corp. purchases of online companies; in July, News Corp. purchased MySpace.com operator Intermix Media for $580 million, and last month it acquired Scout Media Inc., a Seattle-based online sports company that operates 200 Web sites. IGN's game-related properties include GameSpy, FilePlanet, TeamXbox, 3D Gamers, Direct2Drive, and GameStats.com, as well as a network of sites in the "Vault" and "Planet" networks--CamelotVault.com, WoWVault.com, PlanetXbox.com, and PlanetPS2, for example. IGN also owns movie sites Rotten Tomatoes.com and IGN FilmForce, as well as male lifestyle site AskMen.com. -- Shankar Gupta