Themis Looks Ahead

Voodoo Extreme has a great summary of the Themis Group's Report on Online Gaming 2004. They expect worldwide revenues to reach $1.3 billion this year, and over $4 billion by 2008. Also of interest are their predictions about the relative popularity of upcoming persistent worlds. This is how they see them stacking up, in terms of subscriber base, 12 months after launch:

1. World of WarCraft - Vivendi/Blizzard
2. EverQuest 2 - Sony Online Entertainment
3. Middle Earth Online - Vivendi/Turbine
4. Matrix Online - Ubisoft/Monolith
5. Ultima X Odyssey - Electronic Arts/Origin

I agree with them on the first two, but it seems to me that the last three are too close to call. We'll be watching to see how it turns out.