Any Room For New Game Sites?

Hello all,

I've recently been made redundant (Damn Bankers) and have decided to try and make a modest living out of websites. My question is, do you think they is room for any new Game Sites? IGN/Gamespot etc have been around for over a decade and are huge. Gametrailers is also a very good site. Now i'm not stupid enough to try and take on any of them. For one i'm a single person with no budget, but can you have a fairly successful game site these days?

I'm not talking about 1 million members or anything, but 10,000 would be nice! I've decided to build a videogame site. It's just going to be purely videogame discussion, with news, and i suppose my stand out features are a Members Arcade where you can play classic games, with highscores, user created tournaments etc, and member blogs.

I believe i've bought a decent name Game Verdict. What do you guys think. I just opened it, 7 hours ago. Do i stand a chance? Thanks.

There's certainly a lot of video game commentary sites out there - but that doesn't mean there's no more room for something new and interesting.

There's plenty of room for new game sites, but not the same old thing that other sites are doing. You'll only be successful if you do something original, something a bit different that'll make you stand out from competition. Doing another site that's basically just a clone of existing sites will fail.

The beast says it like it is. If you are small, be small, stay in your niche and get some individuality. If you have that, you should have a decent model for a small website to sell some small ads on etc.

I suppose i'm realistic and know i won't be able to do exclusive reviews/previews but hopefully a decent discussion board will be enough to draw members in, and keep them? After all i'm guessing the forums on IGN/Gamespot etc are the most used areas of the site?

Two things you REALLY need in todays market

• A forum for a community to be built, and interaction with them
• The hook of a really good podcast.

I'm in the UK, Sorry maybe i wasn't clear the site is actually built, and opened today. I built it in a week. I have the Forum, maybe i can work on a podcast for the future. Oh yes, and another cool feature i have is it's intergrated with Windows / XBox LIVE so your Gamertags are linked to your profiles, and you have Gamertag high score tables/stats etc.

There is always room for quality. Capitalism at its best.

"I'm in the UK, Sorry maybe i wasn't clear the site is actually built, and opened today. I built it in a week. I have the Forum, maybe i can work on a podcast for the future. Oh yes, and another cool feature i have is it's intergrated with Windows / XBox LIVE so your Gamertags are linked to your profiles, and you have Gamertag high score tables/stats etc."

"MartyB1976 said:

"I'm in the UK, Sorry maybe i wasn't clear the site is actually built, and opened today. I built it in a week. I have the Forum, maybe i can work on a podcast for the future. Oh yes, and another cool feature i have is it's intergrated with Windows / XBox LIVE so your Gamertags are linked to your profiles, and you have Gamertag high score tables/stats etc."

I'd forget the forum for now - running a successful community is a much bigger deal than people think - you can't expect to open a forum and have people magically start using it - you don't have the luxury of a media frenzy like Giant Bomb.

Concentrate your efforts on great content, then build your community around it - add profile features, forums, etc. as it evolves and when you can dedicate the time/staff to supporting them fully.

"

So then, how about a link to this site that you're building. After reading this thread I'm definitely interested.

Just do your own thing and don't follow the crowd.

"So then, how about a link to this site that you're building. After reading this thread I'm definitely interested."