News Corp’s video gaming news and reviews site IGN is launching in to China, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Hong Kong.
The brand has been licensed to Asia-Pacific sales network Spiral Media’s Blah! Asia division, which is staffing ap.ign.com – available in Mandarin, Malay and English – with 20 writers, reporters and translators.
This will be IGN’s ninth national site, following localisations for Australia, Canada, Ireland, the UK, US, Germany, Sweden and the Middle East, the last three of which were also licensed out.
The operation will be led from Kuala Lumpur by editor-in-chief Maxime Villandré, a games industry executive who previously established the UK developer Codemasters in Malaysia.
IGN Entertainment international business development director Adam Doree tells paidContent:
“Our mission is to grow the IGN brand globally – reaching gamers in their own language – and there’s massive growth potential across Asia, particularly in Chinese speaking markets.
“The Chinese games industry is evolving rapidly. Western gaming markets will learn from Asia’s adoption of free-to-play and mobile games – and we can be at the forefront of this shift.”
Commercial sales will be handled by Spiral. IGN’s Doree and international VP Ian Chambers will be running things from the IGN side from London.
Multiplayer online gaming is huge in Asia.
Gaming and tech news publishers are amongst those branching out in to potentially lucrative new territories lately.
Wired last year launched its website in Taiwan. UK magazine publisher Future launched its TechRadar portal in the U.S. in May.
Doree says IGN’s German localisation has doubled traffic in the last 12 months.