Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., parent company of the Fox media empire, today announced its acquisition of gaming network IGN. The move comes as little surprise, since Murdoch has been expressing his desire to fully enter online media, and IGN was named as a likely entry point. IGN will be assimilated into the company's Fox Interactive Media division.

IGN operates numerous entertainment-related sites, including IGN FilmForce, GameSpy (after a late 2003 merger), the Rotten Tomatoes film ratings aggregate site, FilePlanet, many of the "Planet" and "Vault" gaming sites, TeamXBox, Direct2Drive.com, GameStats, and AskMen.com. In addition to owning the GameSpy website, News Corp. will of course also own GameSpy's multiplayer gaming technology.

Mark Jung, IGN Entertainment's Chief Executive Officer, commented: "We believe that Fox Interactive Media is an ideal fit with IGN Entertainment. With this combination, our users will enjoy access to a broad array of content and services covering video games, music, movies, sports and news, and our advertisers will benefit from enormous reach into a highly sought-after demographic. We are thrilled with this acquisition and can't wait to get started."

News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch also commented on the deal, noting that along with the acquisition of such sites as MySpace.com and Scout Media as well as existing online presences FOXNews.com and FOXSports.com, IGN's properties are ideal to help News Corp. leverage its position on the web into a "leading internet destination."

News Corp. paid $650M for the IGN network. By comparison, the acquisition of MySpace.com went for $580M.