As in most things in life, the answer to your question on Oliver's statement is, "It depends." As a rule, however, I think he is correct. And he brews great stuff.

Oliver is dead-on, as usual...
Some of these craft brewers, even with the hop shortages that have hit the industry, continue to try and roll out these extreme beers just to try and top the other guys. Some brewers wear the IBU count of their strongest death-by-hops ale like a badge of honor.
After trying some of these hop-tacular beers at GABF, I got to the point where my taste buds were burned out on bitter, and I could hardly tell the difference between any of the remaining beers for the rest of the evening.

On your question of why 96% of the market belongs to the big guys, there are two answers.
First, prohibition killed off more than a thousand small brewers. If we still had all of those smaller brewers, then they would have a much larger market share than the national brewers have today - much like the regional brewers in Germany.
Second, these craft brewers don't concentrate on making something that they can market to the masses. Instead, they try to be too unique with their beers, which severely limits their potential market share. Now, that doesn't mean that they should just make a Bud knock-off and stick with that, but they should have one beer that they can sell to a wide audience and then use that to sell more of their "craft" brews.

I not much on extreme beers so I guess I would agree with Oliver. I think extreme beers are a way of "marketing" a craft brewers beers without having to spend the money on advertising. Which leads me to think that 96% of the beer sold are macrobrews primarily becuase they spend the most on marketing their products. Cost also plays a key role as well. Becuase the "big guys" economy of scale is so much larger than the craft brewer it is reflected in the price of the product.

I understand Olivers point, except i like extreme beers. I think a better example would have been to compare extreme beers with hot wings. if you dont like the heat (which i dont) you wont love the "hottest of the hot". With beer, if you like the taste of extreme beers, it is fun to see how far they go.

Although it’s true that most small breweries fail within 5 years, there are some very successful craft and micro brewers that simply can’t keep up with demand. Beer from New Glarus Brewing Company in Wisconsin was hugely popular in Milwaukee and Chicago but they decided to pull out of neighboring states simply because they can’t keep up with demand. The big brewers have established breweries making millions of bottles of beer and can send their product to every bar, restaurant, and liquor store in America. The availability of their beer, even though it’s an inferior product, means that it will be purchased all over.

Rick--The difference in approaches you talk about comes with their marketing approaches because of the limitations of their $$$. 99.9999% of brewers can't compete with Bud and the big boys on a mass market scale because they don't have the cash. Sam C's gorilla marketing approach at Dogfish Head worked for him and what he was doing. Unfortunately for the wide variety of imposters trying the same thing, there is only so much room in the fridge and in the wallet for extreme brews. I'll take my sixer of Winter Storm and read some more discussion...

Garrett Oliver responds here that his opinion was misrepresented:

http://beeradvocate.com/forum/read/1632647