Continuing my blog stream from MindTrek: I went to listen to the “Business of Playing Together” session with Ville Mujunen, Joakim Achrén and Jussi Laakkonen (chaired by Peter Vesterbacka). I made some notes during Jussi’s talk:
Blizzard/Vivendi made 517 million in profit in 2007 from WoW. On the other hand, it will cost 50 million dollars to make a MMO. Facebook games are already making million dollars per year in revenue (e.g. Friends for Sale, MobWars). Introducing concept ‘FunWare’; providing games-like interaction for non-game applications.
frans goes blog 
More information at e.g.:
http://jussilaakkonen.wordpress.com/
also: http://forge.ironrealms.com/2008/10/04/mmo-subscriptions-vs-free-to-play/
http://kotaku.com/350895/blizzard-loots-12-billion-from-2007-thanks-to-wow
Click to access 20080130_Vivendi_Revenues_For_2007.pdf
Frans, thanks for covering the panel! I jotted down some notes about the panel at my blog http://bit.ly/3dRtpG
Jussi, thanks a lot — these notes are great, thanks for putting them online.