Well, it was first rumored that Fox was going to pay $800 million for IGN, but that got dropped down by $150 million. I remember when IGN put itself up for sale after buying Gamespy and Rotten Tomatoes they were thinking they could go for $1 billion or more. It is true that IGN holds a lot of cards, let's just look at the sites that encompass IGN:
IGN
IGN PS2
IGN PSP
IGN PS3
IGN Xbox
IGN Xbox 360
IGN GameCube
IGN DS
IGN GameBoy
IGN PC
IGN Wireless
IGN Gear
IGN Babes
IGN Movies
IGN DVD
IGN Comics
IGN Music
IGN Cars
IGN Gear
IGN Sports
IGN Vault
Gamespy
Gamespy Arcade
Gamespy Arena
Gamespy Planets (Battlefield, Half-Life, etc.)
Fileplanet
Team Xbox
GameStats
Direct2Drive
Voodoo Extreme 3D
AskMen
3D Gamers
Rotten Tomatoes
GamerMetrics
I think I've named them all. That's probably why IGN thought it was worth over a billion, the problem is that now that Fox has bought it they will probably pare the company down by quite a bit. Gamespot covers games and probably has less than half the staff IGN has with all their game sites combined, so I would expect a possible fusion of all gaming news into one portal (probably Gamespy) and the staff will be cut quite a bit. That's just me thinking aloud though because Fox may just keep everything the same. I just think IGN has become overbloated with staff on specific channels and the purchases of Gamespy and Team Xbox.
I wonder if this will be the start of another buying spree as online media becomes a more centralized idea. Maybe the dot-com rush is coming again, this time with creating huge media empires in print and online.