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IGN Entertainment, Inc.
Ignlogo
Type Division of News Corporation
Industry Video game journalism
Founded September 1996
Headquarters San Francisco, California, United States
Parent News Corporation
Employees 15
Website ign.com

IGN Entertainment, Inc., commonly called IGN is a video game journalism website that offers causal news and reviews. In addition to video games, the website also focuses on films, music, and other media. Its corporate parent, IGN Entertainment, owns GameSpy, GameStats, 1Up.com, AskMen.com, TeamXbox, FilePlanet, Vault Network, and UGO. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment.

History[]

Originally Imagine Games Network founded in September in 1996, IGN was founded by publishing executive Jonathan Simpson-Bint and began as five individual websites within Imagine Publishing: N64.com (later renamed ign64.com), P.S.X.-Power, Saturnworld, Next-Generation.com and Ultra Game Players Online.In 1998, the network consolidated the individual sites as system "channels" under the IGN brand. Next-Generation and Ultra Game Players Online were not part of this consolidation; U.G.P.O. dissolved with the cancellation of the magazine, and Next-Generation was put "on hold" when Imagine decided to concentrate on launching the short-lived Daily Radar brand. Then-parent company Snowball.com held an IPO in 2000, which subsequently bombed with the burst of the dot-com bubble.

In June 2005, IGN claimed to have 24,000,000 unique visitors per month, with 4.8 million registered users through all departments of the site. IGN is ranked among the top 200 most-visited websites according to Alexa. In September 2005, IGN was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's multi-media business empire, News Corporation, for $650 million. Currently, the IGN website contains categories that include music, TV and film related topics.

IGN was headquartered in the Marina Point Parkway office park in Brisbane, California, until it relocated to a smaller office building near AT&T Park in San Francisco on March 29, 2010.

In 2011, IGN received a Guiness World Record award for the most visited video-game website.

April Fools pranks[]

On April 1, 2008, IGN released a movie trailer for the hit video game series The Legend of Zelda that prompted many Zelda fans to believe that a live-action motion picture was on the way. Other movie websites reported that IGN was showing the world premiere of the Zelda trailer that day. The supposed release date of the film was April 1, 2009. The trailer had 3.5 million views that day. IGN released a statement the following day stating that the trailer was an elaborate April Fools joke. IGN was flooded with calls and e-mails about the joke but said it was done with good intentions, and to show Nintendo that a Zelda movie could be made and that fans would go see it. In a behind-the-scenes documentary posted the following day, a camera operator stated that they could have cut together a small mini-series with all the footage shot.

On April 1, 2010, IGN made a mock trailer for a possible movie based on the Halo video game series but with an Indian Bollywood theme, which gave away the prank.

On April 1, 2011, another mock trailer was made for a television spin-off of Harry Potter.

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