Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment wanted to make a big splash in the video game world back in March when it introduced Matrix Online, a massively multiplayer online game based on the once-hot film franchise. The game made a big splash all right, like a belly flop.

Over its first three months the game signed up fewer than 50,000 subscribers, a pittance, so in June Warner cut bait and agreed to sell the game to Sony. Last month Matrix Online was downsized from nine virtual "realms" to three, because users were having a hard time finding one another in the game's vast digital ghost town.