This is what I was wondering as well.

Either way it should easily sell 10 million Lifetime so should be easy.

$100 million? Doesn't Blizzard make that every month in WoW subscriptions alone? Guess they can afford to spend whatever they want developing games, and judging by their track record every penny is well spent. Blizzard games are always fantastic - polished at release, balanced for competitive play for years after launch and they love banning cheaters. Can't really ask for more. 

Games like Super Mario, Halo, Starcraft, Gran Turismo and Grand Theft Auto pushing budgets in the $100 Million range is dangerous not because of what they will do to those developers or publishers; but because what it encourages their competition to do. Heading into the next generation Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo need to communicate to publishers that they should develop games with a budget that they can reasonably expect to recover their costs on sales; even if this means that those games have modest graphics and do not push the limits of the system.

Why does everyone hate battle.net 2.0 so much?

Because it has less than half the functionality of Battle.net and what little functionality it does have, half of it is a fucking pain in the ass to use.

i think the battle net 2.0 hate is over the top.

1. it's not THAT bad. saying it has "half the functionality of battle.net" is stupid.

2.  nothing is set in stone and it will definitely evolve. sure, a few core features are missing, but the chat-feature will come for sure and other things like cross region play are at least planned (see http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25399622869&sid=3000&pageNo=3#43 )

not having a LAN mode is a debatable design choice for sure. i think it's to prevent pirates having access to multiplayer either via local LAN or hamachi and other tools, but it's still something that will be missed by many. still: that is a design decision regarding SC2, not BN2.0!

It is half the functionality. Before you could chat, play on LAN, have limitless custom games, use ladders, matchmaking. Now you can only do the ladders, and match making and half assed custom gaming due to piss poor restrictions. I believe that is indeed half.

you forgot cross-region play. in fact, that, chats and LAN are the only things (though not unimportant of course) really missing in bn2.0. but you also have in game voice chat, replays, cross-game chat with friends, achievements (well, some love them) and other stuff.
plus, as i said, it will evolve. the starcraft 1 battle.net was crap compared to Warcraft 3 battle.net as well. besides probably  lan play all old features will eventually be back. i'm not saying it's perfect now, but it WILL become better with missing features and new features like clan support. i just don't feel the need to crap all over the admittedly not yet complete package, something like chat should be a given really, when it will be updated anyway. but whatever, some just have to much time it seems... or feel the need to criticizes everything.

heck, people play on and even PAY for xbox live gold, and to me THAT is one crappy online service...

Oh you are right forgot about the voice chat built in game. However replays were already in previous versions so it's nothing new.

THe whole point is that they have spent so much money and so much time and they jsut have to show this unfinished, at best, or utter trash, at worst, product.

Battle.net doesn't matter to me that much (I never cared too much about the social aspect of RTS gaming). But its annoying of course. Aslong as the game itself is polished and fun to play (and all reports attest to it being a great game) I'll be buying it.

As I said, its annoying, but its not enough to stop the vast vast majority of people to not buy it.