Ever since the issue first arose about the future of DMB, I have been agnostic about it. In my posts, I always tried to point out evidence that supported both the continuation of the PC game and the possibility it would go away. I was in the group of reasonable people who didn't attack Dayne or anyone else. I just tried to understand this from a business perspective with fairly limited data.

In short, I always focused on the fact that the Internet is the way of the future and the PC game might go the way of the 5 ¼ floppy. My only question was the numbers. Reading these boards indicated that there were probably not more than 100 diehard gamers. I always assumed that the number of customers made DMB more of a home business or neighborhood service provider (e.g., dry cleaner, shoe repair) with enough income to support (to whatever degree it did) Tom, Pat and Luke for a good period of time rather than a local insurance company or real estate office. Clearly, it had to pretentions of being on the Russell 5000 list.

None of this augured well for the future of the game. Has anyone considered the very real possibility that as the DMB team aged or grew tired of the work, there would be no DMB game at all in a few years? There's no guarantee that any of the other baseball games will live on forever. Let's face it, none of us gets of this alive.

Perhaps we all should be thankful to Dayne that he saw enough potential in the game that he would use it as the basis for DMB Live. Although I have no interest in the on-line game as it is designed, I will definitely take a look at it when it provides season replays and my favorite - the projection disk - if I can adjust the projected statistics as I do with the PC game.

I have no feelings one way or the other about Dayne personally, so this is not an "attack" on him. But I have to wonder whether or not he was being intentionally deceptive if not lying. This is what he said in his announcement:

"We do not feel a new version can proceed without a new interface … This would require us to outsource this work at high cost. … Given the relative return on investment, we must focus our marketing efforts and budget on the online games."

If this is the situation today, this was the situation when he bought DMB. I trust he is experienced and smart enough to have done due diligence on the purchase of DMB. The numbers would have been clear to him at that time. . I can't believe anything changed so dramatically in 2 years.

If he did know this was the going to be the evolution of DMB, then he would have been better off just saying so from the beginning. What would be different today? Many people on these boards would have ranted, but the majority of us would have just accepted that things always change and decided whether or not to continue with the on-line game. He could have saved two years of "sturm und drang" on the future of the game which had to be draining to him and DMB staff. Based on what I've read, most of the posters would have continued buying PC products for as long as they could. If he was not being honest, then he brought all this on to himself.

I remember when the game was first sold to IS, Gamer58 was one of the first to predict the demise of DMB PC. Yes, he was a bit over-the-top in his posts, as if it was life and death, and it was right for those of us who told him to get a grip. A wait and see attitude was the proper one. But we can acknowledge that he had the right sense of what was going to happen. But I don't know if it was worth all these endless debates