Club Penguin, the youth-oriented virtual world, has been sold to Disney for US$350 Million, with an additional US$350 Million to be paid by 2009 if certain performance criteria are met. According to Bob Iger, Disney president and CEO:
This acquisition is consistent with our strategy of leveraging technology to create and deliver high-quality entertainment around the world and our commitment to investing our capital to generate growth and value for our shareholders
Not only did Disney purchase the world itself, but also hired the original founders to keep it running. Lane Merrifield, Dave Krysko and Lance Priebe will continue as senior management for Club Penguin, growing it slowly in order to preserve the qualities that have made it as popular as it is.
In the early days of Web 2.0 we saw this kind of thing begin to happen, most notably with Paul Graham's sale of Viaweb to Yahoo!. Yahoo! Stores soon became the model of choice for many developers: instead of building with the intention of running it long-term, they would build to flip. Club Penguin may be for virtual worlds what Viaweb was for Web 2.0.
I'd recommend a retitle of the subject to reflect the $350mil purchase of a POTENTIAL $700mil business :)