• by Shankar Gupta , March 1, 2006

IDG Entertainment, owner of gaming information site Games.net, and The New York Times Co.'s About.com are expected today to launch About.Games.Net, a co-branded games vertical that combines both properties' content.

Michael Daecher, About.com senior vice president for content, said the two-year deal will combine "extras" from Games.net, including screenshots, cheats, and game strategies, with About.com's reviews, previews and strategy guides. Additionally, Games.net will provide its "meta-review" score, which aggregates and averages the editorial reviews from Gamepro.com, Gamespot.com, IGN.com and Gamespy.com, for the games reviewed by About.com.

"We have guides covering each of the platforms, we have guides covering specifically video game strategies, we have quite a bit of our own content," said Daecher. "This is the effort to showcase the perspective and views of our guides, as well as the depth of the content."

The site is hosted in a subdomain of Games.net, but About.com's ad sales team will be selling the ad units, and About.com and IDG will share ad revenue, said Craig Eastman, director of online product development for IDG Entertainment. An About.com spokesman said that no ad space had yet been sold for the games site.

Daecher said that About.com is currently looking for a provider of video content for the games portal, as well. "Now with a third party, we'll be able to offer more depth, screenshots, and eventually video," he said.