China's home grown MMOG (massive multiplayer on-line game) Yulang has reached 9 million users in just 2 months.  BUT, they make no money on the sale of the game or the on-line connection.  They make money from the sales of virtual assets like IGE.  Bottom line - they make no money compared to WOW (World of Warcraft).  The math for WOW is about $600 million in subscription fees and $140 million in product sales.  This does not include the virtual auction market going through IGE and Ebay etc.... 

I did write a while back on the mobile opportunity in China.  Last year at CTIA 2004 at the China Mobile Symposium, China had 260 million mobile subscriber.  The total net income of all the mobile operators is a small fraction of the US market with a smaller mobile population, which I concluded that there is no money to be made in China. 

The economics in Asia is so different than North America or Europe.  It is a high volume game with razor thin margins.  But, China is adopting mobile technology that is ahead of Europe and North America.  They already have mobile commerce with over 300 million Golden Wallets.  Of course, it is a State related initiative.

If we broaden our definition of gaming to the gambling space(the gambling sites like to call themselves gaming companies too), Party Poker generated close to half a billion dollars on the bottom line.  It is a 4 year old company, folks.  On-line poker is a game of skill and chance.  Skill will prevail over the long run.  So, we should view Poker on-line as a type of MMOG.  This is where the rainbow comes down to the pot of gold

In the evolution of gaming, with availability of broadband, MMOG is beginning to take momentum.  An interesting article on Eve On Line illustrates some of the game dynamics of the future in MMOG.  Closer to home, the success of WOW is all the validation needed to confirm this is one of the new gaming trend we should see grow in the space of gaming.