Online games media records visitor boom

The readers of UK games magazines may be falling but there’s better news for the online brands.

Eurogamer has seen unique visitors in November 2010 increase 15 per cent to 5,216,449. The firm has a daily average of 233,949 unique browsers and over 1m daily page impressions. The numbers are all ABCe figures and factor in all of Eurogamer’s global websites, but not its sister sites.

Rival publication IGN doesn’t use ABCe and instead uses comScore. The firm told MCV that its global uniques reached 23.3m units in November 2010.

Future uses a different internal system – Site Stats – and has seen 2m global unique users for PCGamer in January 2011. CVG reached a high of 2.75m global uniques in November, and is up 81 per cent up year-on-year. Gamesradar also saw 5.25m global unique users in December.

Imagine’s NowGamer uses a different audit system again – this time Google Analytics. The website enjoyed a 226.54% increase in unique users from December 2009 to December 2010. 400,000 global users accessed its site for the first time that month.

GameSpot UK meanwhile has seen a slight year-on-year visitor decline for December, reporting 4,612,274 unique users for the month. GameSpot’s figures include its network sites such as GameFAQs but only factors in UK visitors.

Although these figures show a boom in users online, it’s important to note that these numbers aren’t actually comparable as each website uses a different auditor.

We’ve come a long way since our first ABCe audit in 2005,” said Eurogamer MD Rupert Loman.

Despite also expanding into new areas such as events we’ve consistently shown stellar growth on the Eurogamer websites and we’re clearly still the leading site for core gamers across Europe.”

IGN marketing director Rich Keen added: Growing audiences are always good news for the industry, especially given the shocking decreases reported in today’s print ABCs within the core games editorial sector.

"IGN.com’s comparable global audit figure on comScore totals 23.3 million unique users, which is testament to our expansive audience of both core and mainstream games consumers. These figures demonstrate just how much impact online media can have compared to declining print brands.”

And James Binns, Future’s online, PC and Edge chief, said: Strong content and audience engagement have given Future two brilliant web stats. Editor Tim Edwards launched PCGamer.com in June 2010 and has delivered almost two million unique users in January 2011. Tim Ingham on CVG.co.uk has driven the news agenda with an 81% increase in uniques year on year.”