Ziff Davis trying to sell EGM, 1up, Games for Windows

Games
1

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2007/01/ziff_davis_game_division_up_fo.php

I was just chatting to a fellow journalist about this just now, and realized that though it’s well known in the biz community, it hasn’t filtered down to the game website level - as Paidcontent.org mentioned last week and I’ve heard off the record elsewhere, Ziff Davis is more actively entertaining offers for each of its three main magazine/websites divisions, including the Ziff Davis Game Group, home of EGM, Games For Windows magazine, and the 1UP.com network.

-Scott-

2

Are they allowed to sell Games For Windows when it’s a Microsoft sock puppet?

3

What’s the reason for this sale?

4

Money.

5

What exactly is left of Ziff-Davis after these sales? Are they dismantling the entire company for an investor payout?

Also, who else is still in the business who would want to buy these relatively big gaming publications?

6

Conde Nast?

7

I would be sad if IGN entertainment bought them out. I like Gamespy… but don’t care for IGN itself.

8

Or IGE and the Zam.com network and their new investors in a further move towards legitimizing themselves.

9

What other properties does Ziff own these days? If they sell off the Games Group, it’d be like a ghost town over on 2nd and Mission.

10

Obviously money, smartasses; what I wanna now is the reason they need the money – are the mags not earning enough? Is ZD in dire financial straits? Is ZD getting out of the game biz? 'sup, homes?

11

They also have PC Magazine and Extreme Tech. There are some other properties, but those are the biggies.

12

Plus Ziff has all those blogs and IPTV shows now. You have blogs like Gearlog, which is a bit like Engadget and Gizmodo, and you have shows like DL.tv and Cranky Geeks.

13

According to the 3rd quarter results, ExtremeTech magazine was closed.

Also according to those results, the Game Group is the smallest of the three groups (Consumer/Small Business Group, Enterprise Group, Game Group) in terms of revenue.

14

ExtremeTech, the occasional print publication, was closed. The web site is still very much alive. Unless they haven’t told me somethng ;-)

15

The investors who bought Ziff-Davis at the end of the dot com boom simply want to get a return on their investment. They’ve stuck it out with us for quite a few years, and now that Internet properties are hot again, they’re finally ready to pull the trigger on selling.

16

They’ve been trying to dump ZD forever, so this isn’t exactly news. The only thing of note is the fact that there’s a lot more money floating around than a few years ago.

— Alan

17

They’ve been quietly on the market for a VERY long time (like several years at this point). Nothing really new here.

18

I don’t get it. Isn’t Games for Windows:TOM a key part of Microsoft’s “marketing partnership” with Z-D for Vista and Windows in general as an entertainment software platform? Why would Z-D want to give up something supposedly so valuable?

19

I don’t think they are going to piece meal it out. Ziff Davis wants to sell the whole thing as an operational unit for big money.

20

Because as “big” as Games for Windows is, it’s a drop in the PC Magazine bucket. And because, as said above, it’s much easier to sell the entire publishing unit then publications piecemeal.

— Alan