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Spore Delayed Until Q2 2008
Posted by
Zonk
on Wed May 09, 2007 07:47 AM
from the no-terraforming-until-next-year-go-home dept.
from the no-terraforming-until-next-year-go-home dept.
georgewilliamherbert writes "CNet has the news that EA is reporting a slight loss for the quarter. It expects profits for the year to fall short about ten cents, hitting a high of $1.20 as opposed to the expected $1.31. The company's share price was down 3% in extended trading yesterday. The reason for these adjustments? EA reluctantly announced that Spore has been delayed until Q2 2008. ' Redwood City, Calif.-based Electronic Arts said it taken out Spore, a game where players build organisms from scratch, from its financial projections for the fiscal year ending in March 2008, adding that the game could be delayed until fiscal 2009. In the fourth quarter ended March 31, the company said its net loss widened to $25 million, or 8 cents per share, from $16 million, or 5 cents, in the year-earlier period. Excluding items, the company earned 6 cents per share versus 14 cents in the year-earlier period.'" From a technology perspective, this thing seems at least as complicated as some Massive games; makes perfect sense it would take about as long to build this title as a game in that genre.
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Spore to Ship 'When It's Done' And Not Before 135 comments
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Spore About Six Months Away 90 comments
SimCity creator and all-around genius Will Wright recently publicly stated that Spore is about six months away. Whether that's six months from completion or release isn't said. CVG has his comments from a recent interview with Radio 5 Live: "Spore's an ambitious game - which he admits - that's essentially a life sim. Players start off as a single-cell organism and then create their species at every stage of its evolution - from its first steps on land through to tribes then a culture and then finally it's off to explore the galaxy. 'We've had to do a lot of testing to make sure that the game is accessible by a wide group of people', Wright went on to explain. 'I want the people who have played The Sims to be able to play Spore - I don't want it to be some thing just hardcore gamers play.'"
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Will Wright's Spore To Release Sept. 7th 186 comments
After several delays and much anticipation, Spore looks like it will finally be coming out this year. EA has announced a September 7th release date for the game. The only confirmed platforms so far are Windows PCs, Macintoshes, the Nintendo DS and various mobile phones. Wright wants the Wii, 360, and PS3 to have the game, but they're not firm 'yes'es yet. Newsweek's LevelUp blog is celebrating the announcement with a series of interviews. N'Gai Croal spoke to Will Wright, and the man himself tries to convince us why it's been worth the wait, and (oh yeah) why it has taken so long. Croal also sat down with the game's Executive Producer, Lucy Bradshaw, who explains how the game has settled onto other platforms like the DS and mobile phones.
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The real reason... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The real reason... (Score:4, Funny)
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Maybe they used scripted events instead of actual AI. Maybe the objects only interact correctly on that particular level.
I sense a Black and White coming (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I sense a Black and White coming (Score:5, Insightful)
If a game can stop being "all that good" with the passage of time, then it was never great to begin with.
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Black and White had years of hype-machine following it, proclaiming it the best game ever with the best AI, most creative premise, best writing, etc. All the magazines and websites had previews. Then as the months dragged on and it was delayed, the hype started to dissolve. Then when people actually played the game, the hype disappeared... turns out the game was never that great to begin with.
Same thing could happen to Spore. Look at how much hype "The Movies" got before
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Black and White had years of hype-machine following it, proclaiming it the best game ever with the best AI, most creative premise, best writing, etc. All the magazines and websites had previews. Then as the months dragged on and it was delayed, the hype started to dissolve. Then when people actually played the game, the hype disappeared... turns out the game was never that great to begin with. Same thing could happen to Spore. Look at how much hype "The Movies" got before it came out, and what impact has it had on the industry? Next to none.
There is a trend that you are missing in the examples you are providing, one that is far more telling as to why those games were well hyped flops and why few people fear the same about Spore.
Hint: The initials P.M. come into play.
I'm not saying Sid's games don't have their faults, and I'm especially starting to feel burned by the combo of "publish and forget" and "one million and one expansion packs!" business strategies that Maxis has adopted under EA. But publishing games while failing to deliver
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True. It can just get identified as vaporware over time.
I honestly thought that was a released game since I seem to remember hearing about it quite some time ago.
Going from "almost ready in 2007" to "possibly as late as 2009" puts it into the category of more hype than substance. Then you really have to doubt the validity of any previews you saw of it. Did we see actual game components, or something w
Say it ain't so... (Score:4, Funny)
Also - insert DNF joke
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*cry*
Re:Say it ain't so... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, it will come out as a pot of petunias, whose final thought will be "Oh no, not again."
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Mac Support (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mac Support (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm on to you, EA! (Score:5, Funny)
..I guess that makes it more like Weekend At Bernie's 2.
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Re:I'm on to you, EA! (Score:5, Funny)
I thought the delay was due to them using the game to re-evolve a replacement Will Wright. Last I'd heard they've achieved a coder with three brains and six eyes, but only one foot and no hands. They've been trying to teach it to code by hopping up and down on a large keyboard, but it's not working out very well. (I believe they've nicknamed the creature "Won't Write".)
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what really happened... (Score:4, Funny)
I don't get the hype. (Score:2)
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Why do you assume they are lying about the evolution aspect of this game? They put out videos like a year ago that showed how you can choose where the body parts go, how many there are, what they are, etc, and the computer will calculate how the animal moves.
I'm a little fuzzy on why it's taking so long, though, since there's no 'plot' and n
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If you don't believe me just go look on youtube for the videos from the various E3 and GDC demos.
Re:I don't get the hype. (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Inappropriate content management. How are they going to filter for crass people who make walking embodiments of MA material?
2. Transitions. Moving from an amoeba to a fish isn't a boolean moment. If you watch the videos, you see them constantly skip the transitions and go from clearly an amoeboid to clearly a sea dweller to clearly a tribal society etc. Transitioning is obviously difficult to get right.
3. Choices. There's a huge amount of fervor and expectation centered around this game, and I think they want to avoid "obvious" criticisms. Things such as "Why can't I have a creature with no legs?" "Can my creature have two brains?" "Why does my civilization have to be on land?"
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Evolution through Intelligent Design and Evolution through Natural Selection are both theories and neither has been proven or disproven. It's especially hard since if God only made 1 small change right at the very beginning, it makes the whole thing ID and is nearly i
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It'll have a bunch of fundies yelling, "Hey... wait a minute... we don't mean THAT kind of intelligent design, we mean... ummm, like... creationism... uhhhh... fuck"
And then we will all point our fingers and laugh because they used the taboo word that we've all come to shun, and they've used "intelligent design" as a euphemism for.
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Send cavemen, send armies, send nukes - kill off other "sectors".
You need to send armies off to other sectors in order to figure out if they're occupied and what not.
Spore is bigger than this.
Some planets will have life, others won't.
The ones that do have life will have it in different stages of development.
If you do end up getting the technology to visit other planets, and for some reason don't like the hairstyle on the inhabitants (fucking hippies!) - don't just nuk
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Much like Doom 3, major ass hype and it lost out to HL2 because it wasn't just dark tunnels over and over. Not to mention Digimon world 3 on the PSX had hundreds of evolutions an
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> Then again, I have fond memories of Mega Lo Mania, the early days of :P
> Civ, Risk and what not to at least retain some modicum of hope for Spore.
> I mean, YOU GET TO OBLITERATE PLANETS!
The ability to obliterate a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
No quantum leap anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, though: EA seems to think that Spore is such a unique game that it will sell no matter when it is released. I'm not sure about this. Plenty of companies are working on creating more dynamic and procedural content for games, such as the NaturalMotion software for simulating the human body. If EA/Wright keep postponing it, Spore will not feel like the quantum leap it was supposed to be.
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phew (Score:4, Funny)
BTW, what is the record on longest development time for a game? In Q2 08, Spore will be just shy of a decade. IMO, anything Will Wright has spent nearly a decade on has to be truly awesome.
Much to learn, my young padawan. (Score:3, Insightful)
Good (Score:2, Informative)
talk about over hyped (Score:2)
Teasing isn't nice. (Score:2)
So sad.
It's {a bunch of / too many} games (Score:2)
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Re:Game or Metagame (Score:4, Informative)
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