Industry regulators believe the Chinese market will continue to grow with numbers between 30 and 50 per cent in 2009 compared to 2009. Total market price would then be around 4 billion dollars.

China’s government provides the last hurdle towards really making the Chinese online market count; the General Administration of Press and Publication plans to tighten regulations, making government approval and license a requirement towards releasing a game. The report that foreign individuals and companies are not allowed to invest in China-based online game operations will only limit the growth.

China does have a positive attitude towards competitive gaming. The World Cyber Games global final will be in China for 2009, and the Electronic Sports League has been an organiser of major events for some time now. Lets hope they will not try to limit that growth!

“We have a really exciting slate, including five Rolling Stones songs, and we just see a constant rise in the percentage of our users that are connected to the internet, the percentage that are playing online, and the percentage that are downloading music – it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.”

More importantly, the latest installment has backward compatibility, allowing users to bring over songs they’ve already downloaded and paid for, and enables them to play these songs in the new game.

He touches on the software/hardware sales split by saying that a new franchise will see a 50/50 divide between both, DJ Hero being a prime example, but with Guitar Hero they keep seeing more solid software sales because of the established user base.

Guitar Hero 5 sold more copies than any other Guitar Hero on launch, beating Beatles Rock Band and clearly building on its bigger following because of the difference in marketing activities for both games; Beatles Rock Band saw enormous marketing efforts being made, linked to the Beatles releasing their box set simultaneously.

When linked to the comment of Activision’s CEO about passing the consoles by releasing a fully functioning gaming product, he clearly had Guitar Hero in mind. With this success they have once again shown the branding value of this franchise.

Aside from hinting on a day that players’ Facebook profiles will be integrated in Guitar Hero, he also expected many of his now console based games to be playable independent of a console!

“I think what the untethered Guitar Hero does is equal the playing field a little more and give you some leverage with first parties when it comes to downloadable content and the business model,”

So aside from integrating all his PC games into one platform (Battle.net 2.0) he will also be able to bring games to your living room regardless of your ownership of one of the consoles.  The argument he makes for this is that he hasn’t seen any plans of any new console, so it must be more than 2 years away for new consoles to be launched, allowing him to explore all the options the current hardware environment has to give.

“So there, we have figured it out, go back to bed America, your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed America, your government is in control again. Here’s American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed America, here’s American Gladiators. Here’s 56 channels of it. Watch these pituitary retards bang their fuckin skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go America, you are free… to do as we tell you. You are free, to do as we tell you.”

Read the entire Craigslist article on Wired.com!