On the surface, this sounds like a good report by Simnasium. (And I hope it truly is.) However, I don't like the part where they appear to assume buying DMB would also buy DMB's customers into their pay only online service. Perhaps I'm misreading this, but if they think DMB's customers are all itching to leave DMB behind and jump at the chance to pay them money for their online only service, they are terribly mistaken. If they eventually kill the stand alone DMB game, I'll play the current DMB game until Microsoft changes Windows to the point that it will no longer run it. And if that happens, I'll just quit if I can't find a suitable replacement product.

Obviously time will tell what their real motives are and the true direction they want to go. At this point, it's just too hard for me not to be disappointed since I knew where Tom and the other folks at DMB loyalty laid. They are like your next door neighbor that you can always count on to be there to help you. Simnasium came out of nowhere and is a complete unknown to me. It's kind of hard to trust a stranger with the best product installed on my computer. I fear that Simansium's loyalty is with their pay only service since that is the product they initially developed and buying DMB is just a means to an end. I mean, if they were more interested in marketing a stand alone baseball game, isn't that what they would have developed in the first place?

Another question I have is how will Simnasium feel about people like myself that make a free home grown disk available like my All Time Team Greats disk? Will they change DMB so that isn't possible anymore in an effort to force people to buy their disks? Or will they keep (and improve) the tools available in DMB to continue doing this?

The fact that it is Simansium now, and not anyone from DMB, that will call all the shots with regards to the fate of DMB is just too much to swallow at this point and still feel good about the future of the game. You can't buy loyalty, so hopefully they will earn it over the years by staying true to the DMB game. If so, I'll be kicking myself for doubting this buyout and look silly for expressing my concerns.

Keith Hemmelman