World of Warcraft is, without reason of doubt, one of the best successes on the market that, even though it has aged and should have been dead already (in theory only - because game rarely "live" more that 2 years). But WoW is still the leader, the moneymaker, the game that drives so many people crazy - destroys marriages, makes people rich and so on. And it keeps going. How long? Well... there's still a pretty long road ahead, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick believes.

Speaking at an investor meeting, he said that it would take an investment of half a billion to a billion dollars to take on World of Warcraft - and even then, success isn't guaranteed. He called WoW "game in an insurmountable product category", saying that neither EA, Microsoft, nor Sony have managed to really compete against it, even though some huge amounts of money were invested into game development.

"We don't think that even if we made the USD 500 million or billion-dollar investment to get a product out [to compete with WOW] that we would even be successful doing it," Bobby Kotick said. "When you... Look at all the money that's already gone to these businesses that have failed, there didn't seem a likelihood that even a well-managed company like Activision would have the prospect for profit any time soon in this category."

Kotick also paid tribute to the talent at WOW developers Blizzard: "They have a model that is very well-developed, they have a very keen understanding of their audiences, and they're just scratching the surface of opportunity in a lot of areas... These guys are among the best in the world of game development."

Well... he might be right, he's the CEO and stuff and knows his stuff, but I would dare to say that two different things are involved: first, World of Warcraft was the only game that, when it was released, offered a great experience. People started playing, got used with it and it's hard (if not impossible) to fight against things people got used with. Take as an example your friend that doesn't even want to try Linux because he got used to Windows. The second thing comes from what Kotick said: you don't have to have a very keen understanding on your audience. You need to know and feel what the POTENTIAL audience wants. Grab the undecided ones and you kick WoW's arse. Maybe Age of Conan will do it, even though it's a M game.