Nah he just wanted and is getting free publicity - who had even heard of Gaia Online before, I hadn't but now I've been to their site and closed it 30 seconds later.

I think this guy hurt the all the nerds feeling. Seeing how emotionally hurt you all by what this guy said.

As a Craig myself. Let me apologize for this Craig's unreasonable and ridiculous statements. The I will bring it up with him at the Craig meeting next Thursday.

Quite well really. The website sells 'Donation' items every month and when people complain about crap customer service and want their money back, they can't get it because they 'donated' the money.

How are they going to do that? They're too busy trying to discover how they went so wrong.

The hunters and their pets will do all the work, because Shaman can't do that while stunned.

Don't forget the crack team of stealth shockadins

Games are not meant for just kids! Perfectly true, and something this Craig moron needs to wake up and realise.

Well, that and he is a complete muppet who has the intellect of my sofa.

BMW is a big automotive manufacturer with a very small portion of a market. If this is their desire, they succeed. Otherwise, that's considered a failure.

Apple is an unquestioned failure in the home PC market. There's some serious denial going on if you think otherwise. Apple's success has been in personal electronics (ipod) and music (itunes) and that's basically it. They were on the verge of absolute doom until the ipod saved them and brought them back to a position of relevance. How soon people forget about a short 10 years ago when OS9 was horrible and Apple was a very tiny sliver of the PC market and they were about to go under as a company. Steve Jobs found a different way to sell things to people using a brand name, and the ipod was the mechanism of their success. Otherwise, yes Apple is a horrible failure at making computers. OSX has helped, but it's still nowhere near a success when compared to any other half-decent PC maker.

Now, when considered in relative terms of the size of the market they're attempting to secure and their popularity within their own specific niche there's no doubt that they're successful.

The same sort of relation can be made with WoW and their potential audience and what portion of the US they've been able to capture. Yes, WoW is an easy success story in the very tiny PC game industry where a million copies sold of any particular title is a smashing success.

However, it's pretty tiny compared to the actual number of consumers, the number of consumers in the key demographics and would be a failure when compared to many many many other things out there in absolute terms, not relative terms.

The guy is mostly right. WoW's monthly fee is a hinderance to their progress. Look at how many more players in Asia play the game compared to the US+Europe subscriber base. Why? Because they're paying on a per-hour basis, and we pay a flat rate. They're able to pay based on their playstyle, we have to pay no matter what in a flat amount and that doesn't necessarily work for everyone. We have a different sort of gaming culture here as well, and gaming isn't necessarily very social in a public place as it is in many Asian countries.

I don't think you look at the big picture when you say that the guy has no idea what he's talking about. You look at the very tiny, very basic "lol 10 million" figure and assume that something that massive and beyond your comprehension is an unquestionable sign of succes.

It isn't. Especially when compared to an absolute market, not a relative one. There are plenty of ways to monetize a game such as WoW aside from subscription fees. Puzzle Pirates has a pretty good system of "donation" where you get in-game things in exchange for real money. You can very very slowly work your way up to the same things, or you can pay $5 to buy your way to the ability to get them. I don't think he said the entire game has to be %100 free did he? Stop assuming that's what he meant, and jump to very poor and illogical conclusions!

More subscribers can equal more money. A $50 boxed game + $15 just to start playing is a HUGE barrier for a lot of people, especially the kind of people who just buy a $50 game at a store and that's that.

I think the only thing more absurd than the original article, is the analysis that says he's insane when clearly he makes valid and good points.

The latest stats show Apple has a 21% market share in the home market for the US. That's about equal to Dell and HP so I don't know how you can say Apple is a failure in the home market.

These aren't really fair comparisons in my book. To measure "success", I think you have to look at income.

If Apple had only 5% of the market share, but was making $700,000 per computer, they'd be a success, even though they'd only have 5% of the market. Now, this is a ridiculous scenario, but it's also ridiculous to say that WoW is not a success strictly because they have a smaller user base than another game.

I don't know the numbers, but I can't imagine Gaia Online making a lot more money than Blizzard is right now. If they were, Google would have bought them by now.

Dave, you aren't very bright if you say this guy's right.