Who Wants 1UP?

January 18, 2007 | By: Kyle Orland

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As Ziff Davis shops its vaunted Game Group around, we handicap the odds on some likely (and unlikely) potential buyers.

It's hard to picture the modern American video game journalism landscape without the Ziff Davis Game Group. Electronic Gaming Monthly continues to be one of the most recognizable gaming magazines in the country after just over 200 issues. Its 600,000 ABC-audited readers (as of the first half of 2006) puts it just outside the top 100 magazines published in the country, making it a lucrative advertising target that can command up to $28,000 for a full page ad.

Online, Ziff controls mega-portal 1UP, whose 13 million unique visitors per month puts it in an elite class of mega-sites like IGN and GameSpot at the top of the online gaming media landscape. Established sub-sites like GameTab and GameVideos and relative newcomers like MyCheats have seen decent growth, giving the 1UP Network breadth as well as depth.

But not all is well in the Game Group. Ziff Davis recently decided to discontinue the long-running Official PlayStation Magazine, officially because "ever-increasing broadband penetration in the U.S. allow for much more efficient distribution of game demos, videos, and trailers" than the magazine's demo disc. Unofficially, however, the Game Group was trimming some dead weight to make it more attractive for a potential buyout. While Ziff isn't saying anything publicly, the fact that they are looking for a buyer has become common knowledge in the past few months. The story developed further when GameDaily BIZ reported last week that Ziff was deep in talks with MTV.

So now that we know what's being sold, who's in the market to buy? We've rounded up some of the usual (and unusual) suspects and tried to suss out how the Ziff Davis Game Group would fit in with their current holdings and business models. Of course, everything here is just conjecture, and any resemblance between these predictions and the actual reality of what ends up happening is purely a coincidence.

Future Publishing
A niche publishing powerhouse in the U.K., Future's U.S. footprint is slightly smaller, though still impressive. The reincarnated Next Generation has grown into a significant business-focused site less than two years after its launch, and online portal GamesRadar is reaching an audience comparable in size to 1UP's, even if its influence with gamers is less pronounced. Ziff's Games for Windows magazine would be a perfect fit with Future's Official Xbox Magazine, and Ziff's recent loss of Official PlayStation Magazine means there would be no conflicts with the proudly unofficial PSM.

Odds: 3 to 1. With strong footholds in the print and online gaming worlds, Future is poised to be the new Ziff better than any other company.

MTV/Viacom
After tentatively dipping its toes in the water with 2005's ridiculously named GameORZ Week (and a 2006 follow-up) MTV dove head first into on-air gaming content with a major cross-promotion with the Xbox 360. Purchasing 1UP.com would bring name recognition and a stable of editorial talent to MTV's relatively new but very beefy video games section, and the combination of Ziff's GameVideos and MTV's GameTrailers (purchased in 2005) would be near unstoppable in the quickly growing online gaming video sub-niche. While Ziff's print outlets would be a little bit of an odd fit for the company, Viacom's holdings include Nickelodeon, publisher of a popular magazine that features video games from time to time. Nick Gamer, anyone?

Odds: 4 to 1. Highly likely, and even likelier given the aforementioned talks.

IDG
Once undisputed king of the game magazine realm, IDG Entertainment's GamePro magazine has generally failed to grow with its audience, leading to a recent decline in the mag's prestige and circulation. Online portal games.net draws respectable numbers, but falls firmly into a second tier when compared with the likes of 1UP. Buying the Ziff Game Group would help prop up this ailing empire and could generate a lot of buzz going into IDG's recently renamed "E for All Expo." (an odd name, but better than the briefly considered "We have all the E and you can't have any Expo.")

Odds: 5 to 1. A perfect fit, but does IDG Entertainment have the means and the desire to expand?

News Corp.
The company best known stateside for Fox broadcasting made a bold salvo into the online world with multi-million dollar purchases of MySpace and IGN in 2005. Buying 1UP would remove a major IGN competitor (much like IGN's purchase of GameSpy did back in the pre-News Corp. days) and help secure the company's still tenuous foothold in the online youth segment. Ziff's print magazines might not be such a good fit with the likes of News Corp.'s TV Guide and The Weekly Standard, but Rupert Murdoch can't argue with a proven money maker like EGM.

Odds: 10 to 1. It'd be a decent fit, but after spending over a billion dollars on two major online properties, News Corp. is probably taking it easy on the acquisitions for a while.