All those places went south *after* he left though. 1UP was without a doubt the best gaming site when he was the Editor-in-Chief there; he helped create GFW Radio, 1Up Yours, the 1UP Show, and so many other great podcasts. He left to form his own site at a certain point, and then a few months later Ziff Davis collapsed, but mostly because they'd been running things terribly for a while. Same with GamePro: nobody took the magazine seriously anymore, Davison took over, and it became basically the American version of Edge. He left after he was offered his current job at CBS Interactive, someone else took over, and the magazine collapsed a few months later after misguided attempts at making it a quarterly.
Davison's a good dude. If there's anything he understands, it's what good and awesome and unique content should look like.