World of Warcraft's popularity helps boost MMO and casual gaming to a $2 billion international payday; console games to take 29 percent of OL market by 2011.

Whatever you think of World of Warcraft, there's no denying that it has reshaped the gaming landscape. As of last month, Blizzard Entertainment's massively multiplayer online role-playing game had over 6 million subscribers, making the population of its virtual world larger than many European countries.

The latest evidence of WOW's influence comes in the form of a report from DFC Intelligence. The San Diego-based game-industry research company has just issued a report which says that "subscription revenue from online games was $2 billion in 2005." WOW came out in November 2004 and has been among the top three games in DFC-rival NPD Group's weekly PC-bestseller list since it hit the market.