Define China

Well there are about 2-3 million units sold illegally at full market prices now for consoles - and those people have to seek them out.

PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, GameCube... it all exists. The PS2 is very popular because there are so many games available for it that are pirated. PS3 is less popular because it's more expensive and it's more difficult to get the pirated games, but Wii outpaced PS2 last year - I think we estimated 750,000 Wiis were sold in 2008, along with 625,000 Xbox 360s.

This is all lost revenue for Microsoft and Nintendo, and it's also lost tax revenue for the Chinese government. And more importantly to the Chinese government it's a loss of control of the content - so it's really in their best interests to get out the stick.

Unfortunately they're not going to be able to use that installed base, because the modifications made to the consoles to allow them to play the pirated games render them useless for the online service. None of those gamers are going to want to take their consoles in to get them fixed as you'd have to.

It was critical - they're by far the leading foreign game company there, and they're setting the standard for foreign and domestic games. Chinese companies have long been China-class and not quite world class, and now with the development and operations of some of the MMORPGs they are world class in a small sliver of the game world.

But beyond that sliver they need to learn from other companies, and Blizzard is one of them, EA is another. Some of the giants out there deserve some respect in their approach of developing their companies to be the giants that they are.

I think it's critical for Blizzard, but I think it's also critical for China's continued success, because China would not have been as galvanised to grow quickly had they not been spurred by successful companies that were taking share - such as Blizzard.

They also have a lot vested in this new joint venture now - we'll see a bigger push towards the networked games when the Battle.net platform launches, with Starcraft... but I think there'll be more content issues, because I understand Starcraft has some ghosts in it... but there's always a content issue.

When World of Warcraft went offline there was all this speculation that other games were going to take its share - but they didn't. So we drew down our annual forecast from USD 3.8 billion to USD 3.65 billion because people were waiting on the sidelines. They were playing it in free mode, and not giving their money to other companies.

There was no other game that stepped up to that level - people had thought perhaps Aion would, from Korea, which is another important foreign title, but that went up and down in a big hurry and it wasn't the replacement game.