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Spore to Ship 'When It's Done' And Not Before
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Aug 02, 2007 11:54 AM
from the sometime-before-i-am-fifty-please dept.
from the sometime-before-i-am-fifty-please dept.
Citing the sheer potential of the title, EA executives John Riccitiello and Frank Gibeau stated in a conference call yesterday that Spore will not ship until it is finished. Next Generation reports: "'It's one of those breakthrough products that might come across the industry every three, five, seven years ... We could not be more bullish for the potential of the franchise as we are right now,' said Riccitiello. He said that he still expects the game to ship in the 'March, April, May' 2008 timeframe. However, Riccitiello said, 'We will make the choice of shipping a better game than an on-time game given the high potential for this franchise.'"
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Spore Delayed Until Q2 2008 107 comments
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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News of Spore Delay Miscommunication 114 comments
Ars Technica's Opposable Thumbs blog reports that the much-anticipated title Spore has been pushed back yet again from its tentative release in 2008. That's right: it's now delayed until 2009. Just to remind you, Spore was announced at GDC 2005. They have some commentary on the delay: "When you see a live demo, it's pretty much the same demo everyone sees. It may look like the whole thing is off the cuff, but in reality you're seeing a carefully scripted show. It's possible giant chunks of the game are missing, and the illusion of the title being near completion is mostly smoke and mirrors. With a game this open-ended, it's possible the development team is running into a slew of unforeseen problems." Update: 06/21 07:24 GMT by Z : Unfortunately, there's been some miscommunication here. The previous announcement of Spore's delay already included the possibility of the game not shipping until 2009. EA's fiscal year ends in March, with fiscal 2009 running from the end of this next year into the beginning of the year after. Next Generation clarifies the issue.
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Translation: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
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Besides gett
Re:War & Trade (Score:3, Interesting)
What, no SHIPS? (Score:2)
Coming soon (Score:5, Funny)
CTRL+F (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
It's official, then... (Score:2, Funny)
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Balancing act (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously no game is ever perfect, so it is up to the developers to decide the proper balance between time spent improving the game and delays before release.
That said, nobody wants another "Duke Nukem Forever." If you spend too much time on the whole "revolutionizing videogames" someone will take the lessons presented at all these talks Wright does and actually *finish* a game that heavily utilizes procedural generation or whatever before Spore comes out, and it won't be revolutionary anymore.
Re:Balancing act (Score:5, Funny)
hell, I must have missed the first one. how was it?
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Why not do the Apple thing? (Score:2, Interesting)
This works 2 fold. When it ships it catches all the competition and customers by storm, and if it doesn't ship, at least all the leaks created company hype.
Hypocrisy (Score:3, Interesting)
Um... hypocrisy anyone?
Re:Hypocrisy (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Franchise? (Score:4, Funny)
So what, Spore 2010, with updated rosters and some tiny new feature? Repeat formula next year?
You bet! (Score:3, Interesting)
After the success of The Sims, you can be sure EA/Maxis is looking for every new game they release to be the start of another long and extremely lucrative series of expansion packs. I worked at Maxis a few years ago, and The Sims expansion packs were hands down the biggest profit generators across the entire company (and possibly across all of EA). I have no doubt at all they are planning for another endless expansion pack bonanza with Spore.
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As you may know, EA has already confirmed that a DS version [gamespot.com] of Spore is already in the works, and they've hinted that they have plans to release the game on other consoles down the road, so technically Spore can already be considered a franchise. Furthermore, Will Wright's game have an excellent track record when it comes to longevity and replayability. SimCity came out in 1989 and remains a successful franchise property to this day. While the core concept of the gameplay has always been the same, I woul
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This is GOOD (Score:2)
Will Wright to give Spore Demo Next Week (Score:2, Informative)
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Now if they were handing out gamediscs, that would be very different
Things like this always make me worried (Score:3, Informative)
So I really hope it rules, and I hope this just means it'll be given the time it needs, but I worry this is signs that it may never actually happen.
Misunderstood article title (Score:2)
Spore is dead (Score:4, Insightful)
I really hope Spore works out. But I think they may have become subject to high expectations and scope creep.
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From The Man himself: (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's a nice quote, but there are some delayed games that still manage to be bad forever. Look at Daikatana.
Here are a few (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, from Epic, Blizzard, and a few others who are now the big names of the industry for it. It turns out that, surprise, more people buy a game which is finished and polished than something shoved out the door to meet an arbitrary deadline. Much as a couple of publishers still hope that if they believe the opposite really, really hard, it will somehow become reality.
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But yeah, the only thing worse than a moving deadline are patches and bugs. And last 1/3 of a game that's just tacked on and unfinished.
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I think the problem is that most of the game industry is terrible at project management. They set unrealistic timelines, or far too many features, or both. And then when it's obvious they can't complete the game in time, they wait until the very last minute to say anything about it.
For instance, look at how Valve screwed ATI with ATI's Half-Life 2 giveaway. By the time HL2 actually came out, the Radeon 9600 you bought t
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Most of the industry meets their schedules. It's mostly only the blockbuster titles that have issues, specifically because they're trying really hard to push the limits of what's been done before.
Smaller studios don't survive lon
Re:Most small studios die (Score:4, Interesting)
Amen.
A friend recently hassled me into picking up Battlefield: 2142 for my PC, and I've never had a worse gaming experience:
- The user registration was a pain in the butt, since almost every nickname imaginable is already taken and it doesn't give suggestions for unused ones. (It also doesn't accept some for random stupid reasons; I couldn't use "18 Rabbit" because you can't start a nickname with a numeral. Of course it doesn't TELL you you can't use a numeral, you have to get the retards at EA customer service to say it.)
- Trying to get my nickname changed through EA's customer service site is like pulling teeth. I had to make 7 requests, saying the same thing over and over, before an agent that knew what the hell he was doing actually replied with something helpful. It's still not resolved, because it's impossible to pick a new unused nickname without creating a new account using their retarded account system.
- It won't run on my widescreen monitor, instead just setting it to 1024x768 like a moron. When you put in a customer service ticket for this, they reply that the game was not tested on widescreen monitors. WTF?! The game came out in 2006, when widescreen monitors have never been more popular.
- You have to give it admin access and "allow" it on the firewall, because it also wasn't tested on Windows Vista, thus opening up security holes in your system as you're running an internet capable app with no protections whatsoever against malware.
- Even when you do that, PunkBuster will still randomly kick you from games, because apparently PunkBuster *also* wasn't tested in Vista. (How long has Vista been in public betas? All of 2006, for sure. Why the hell hasn't anybody tested in it?!)
- The buddy list in the game works maybe half the time. Maybe. It's hard to say because occasionally it'll work with one person I know, and show the rest as offline (even when they aren't, and even when I'm playing on the same server they're on.) Or, even worse, it won't show them as online OR offline, they just don't show up at all.
- Trying to outfit your character is extremely annoying, as the outfit tab will randomly change to the "pick a team" tab... even when you're in the middle of a drag-and-drop operation!
- Oh, and to cap things off, there's no auto-updater: You have to actually go to the website to find updates, and manually install them. Tribes had an auto-updater over a decade ago, what the hell is so hard about it?
- (Not specifically about this game, but all PC games): Why do I need a serial number AND the CD in the drive to play? Why can't I just have the disk in the drive like on Xbox, or Playstation 3, or Wii, or any other gaming system? Hell, games for consoles are more expensive, if anything they should have more copy protection.
It really, really made me miss Xbox Live. I really hope Microsoft's Games for Windows initiative catches on to save us from this stupidity.
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But soon, the frustration will pass, and it will join DNF in the "Vaporware That Wouldn't Die" list of running jokes. It's better for your customers to be angry at you than laugh at you.
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So, let's quit exaggerating things and call it at the 2 years and 3 months that it's actually been.
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Blizzard did that once with starcraft and diablo and people bitched and whined and complained the whole time. They settled on keeping games a complete secret until they were within a year of release. Look at starcraft 2, the game was actually playable before anyone had even heard of it. This way they get the hype at the most appropriate time without giving it t
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Frankly, I'm glad they waited. When Half-Life 2 arrived...it was *perfect*.
Like a good video game junkie, I lost about 48h of my life in one fell swoop to that game, playing it through 3 times in quick succession. I do not consider those to be wasted hours.
More companies should release products that are "finished".
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