low level addictions make for profitable business models. Starbucks profits off of caffiene addiction. Im convinced Doritos has something in it that is slightly addictive. EverQuest is often associated with addictions. Except this one is mental. A mental addiction is much much stronger than a physical one.

hmm. the profit isnt tied directly to the addiction though - for the same $13/mo you can play once or play 4 hours a day. Now if Sony added a way to buy something on-demand in the game, something that could be bought over and over, that may be so sucessful it would be compared to video poker and the problems associated with that. sony dare not tread on that turf. I was thinking about this because I was looking at the screenshots for everquest 2 at eq2.stratics.com. They're astounding. I feel that the best game ever made is Ultima IX, because it was a big beautiful 3d 1st person world that I could walk around in - anywhere I wanted to go. And the world was convincing and big engouh to be interesting. There hasnt been a game like it. The next generation of MMORPGs will be like Ultima IX, except much much better.

The question is, how do you profit from this now. What if you were time warped back to the 80s and you knew starbucks was going to be a mega-success, how would you profit off of that. Public Shares of stock aside, sony is too big to have its share price directly affected by EQ and StarWars Galaxies. Wait a sec, Electronic Arts on the other hand is publicly traded. 21-Aug-2002 ERTS closing price 65.69. The Amazon Everquest 2 page gives a release date of December 15th. The Amazon Starwars Galaxies page gives a release date of January 30th.