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Spore Coming to Consoles?

Posted by Zonk on Wed Aug 02, 2006 12:49 PM
from the spore'd-in-the-living-room dept.
Entertainment Games
Wowzer writes "EA was previously planning to bring Spore from PC to handhelds. In an interview this week Spore creator Will Wright was quoted as saying they are looking at bringing Spore to all platforms. From the article: 'You might be playing part of the game on a handheld platform, you might be playing the entire game but maybe more avatar-based on a console. The consoles are getting kind of different now, I think there's a really interesting distinction between the Wii and the Xbox 360 and PS3. Something like the Wii offers a lot of interesting creative opportunities for the editors, with the controller.'"
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Related Stories

[+] Spore Promo Video Leaked to YouTube 63 comments
Khamura writes "As E3 draws near, those of us who have been following Will Wright's newest brainchild, Spore, are abuzz with expectation. And lo! Someone posted to YouTube a video that shows 'unedited footage of Spore that will be going to TV networks covering E3 next week'. It includes a look at the overhauled creature editor, a first glimpse of the texturing tools, and various other exciting things that had not been shown this clearly in the early prototype seen at the 2005 GDC. One of them is the ambient music when the UFO visits different planets." It certainly looks like the game we saw last year, but take with a grain of salt just the same.
[+] Will Wright's E3 Spore Presentation 77 comments
moto writes "ThinkGaming is reporting from E3, and had a chance to take a look at Will Wright's Spore during the early-hours press access. From the article: 'To start, Will showed an overview of the latest creature editing system. He mentioned that almost all parts of the editing system, from hands to the mouth, control the creature in its entirety - from its personality to the way it sounds, etc. In addition, the color system is a procedural texturing system that lays initially colors, then various textures (scales, etc.) and more all on top of your creature model. It looks like an incredibly intricate system, as has been seen quite a bit so far in previous videos. It looked like it was nearing completion and would allow for endless possibilities.'"
[+] Spore to be PC Only, For Now 111 comments
Joystiq reports the news that, for the time being, Spore will be only on the PC. This, despite Will Wright's hopes that it would see publication on the Wii, 360, PS3, Gameboy, DS, and PSP. EA seems to be wanting to 'get it right' on the PC to begin with, though, and is discounting the game's publication on those platforms at this time. From the article: "The Wii reference may be a direct result of UK magazine NGamer's recent article that suggests Spore is coming to Nintendo Wii in Spring 2007. As it stands, Wright's team is '100% focused on finishing Spore on the PC and PC only.' That said, you'd have to be pretty foolish to believe Spore will remain exclusive to any format. Like The Sims before it, Wright's latest project will likely invade every screen -- television, computer, mobile phone, etc. -- on Earth."
[+] Why Spore Is Special 77 comments
The New York Times is running a long piece by Steven Johnson, author of "Everything Bad Is Good For You." In 'The Long Zoom', Johnson describes just what is so special about Will Wright's Spore . From the article: "Despite the fictions, many of the themes of Spore are immensely valuable ones, particularly in an age of environmental crisis: the fragility of life, the connection between micro- and macro- scales, the complex networks of ecosystems and food webs, the impact of new technology on social systems. Spore's players will get to experience firsthand how choices made on a local scale -- a single creature's decision to, say, adopt an omnivorous lifestyle -- can end up having global repercussions. They will detect similarities between one level of the game and another, the complex balancing act of global trade mirroring the complex balancing act of building a sustainable environment. And traveling through a simulated universe, from cells to constellations, will, ideally, make them more curious about the real-world universe they already inhabit -- and show them that they have the power to shape that universe as well."
[+] 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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Spore Coming to Consoles? 25 Comments More /

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  • A friggin release date already!
  • This isn't news.. It was reported at about E3, or the week after. It was on that other news site..
  • The title says it all (stupid comment rules).

  • Nice, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The Living Fractal (162153) <`execyte' `at' `execyte.com'> on Wednesday August 02 2006, @01:05PM (#15833123) Homepage
    One of the really intriguing things about Spore, at least to me, was the way it used a random sample of species from a worldwide depository (via the net) to populate the game and create a unique experience every time you played it. I got all sorts of chills thinking about it, sort of like this kind of evolutionary programming might some day lead to an accidental AI (yes I know, very pseudo-science Sci-Fi.. but hey I'm a dreamer)

    So, while I applaud the game being released on the consoles, if it doesn't have the same net-based populating code I think something will be lost. But hey, it'll probably still be cool.

    TLF

    • So, while I applaud the game being released on the consoles, if it doesn't have the same net-based populating code I think something will be lost. But hey, it'll probably still be cool.

      Why shouldn't it? The consoles all have network connectivity.. it could seamlessly detect if there is internet access in the background, and if so, download a bunch of creatures/worlds/whatever. I don't see why being on PC vs Console would affect this ability at all, except perhaps that there are more PCs than consoles connec

    • Thou shall remember that all 3 of the next gen consoles will have online services and connectivity (up to permanent for Wii's Connect24).

  • The Console Plague (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Puff of Logic (895805) on Wednesday August 02 2006, @01:14PM (#15833177)
    I'm really looking forward to Spore, so please don't screw it up by designing it to be "console-friendly". TFA seems to imply that the PC game will be developed first, followed by console ports. Fair enough, if that's the case. But designing games simultaneously for both consoles and PCs seems to result in console gamers saying "wow, this game is much deeper/better than most games!" while PC gamers are shaking their heads at the moronic interface while lamenting what could have been. Oblivion is a prime example of this. Grrr.
    • Deus Ex: Invisible War. That is all >.
    • Oblivion PC has an almost identical interface to Morrowind, and yet nobody complained about Morrowind being "dumbed down." (Morrowind appeared on original Xbox, if you remember.) I think it's just trendy for PC gamers to gripe about that in some futile effort to make people believe that playing games on a $1200 PC is a more "pure" experience than on a $400 console. Or something.

      • Oblivion PC has an almost identical interface to Morrowind

        Either you've never played Morrowind or you need better spectacles.

        Both the interface and the whole game feeling are extremely dumbed down, awkward to use with keyboard & mouse and just not taking advantage of PC's interfaces (input and output alike).

        Oblivion is prettier and much "fuller" than Morrowind (as in you don't have huge empty spaces), but boy does the Xbox360ification suck compared to Morrowind...

        • Not entirely. We have learned that some things just don't work the same on both, and trying to do both at once is a disaster.

          FPS have to be dumbed down for console play. Overbearing auto aim, turning speed limits, limited control options, deeply-nested graphical menus for issuing complex commands because you only have a dozen buttons at most. If you did a simultaneous, identical release on both console and PC with a FPS, the PC version would be an utter flop because it was so crippled compared with other ga

  • The original article (Score:3, Informative)

    by TyrionEagle (458561) on Wednesday August 02 2006, @01:24PM (#15833244) Homepage
    Why link to the original article [spong.com] when you can link to some blog that quotes it?
  • such as the Sims and Sims 2 console versions, we'll see that he normally allows a smaller subset of images (such as clothing styles, hair styles, body platforms) than in the PC versions, and that they're less modifiable.

    My guess, based on his other console versions, would be that the version of Spore on a console may or may not have an online component (based on platform, most likely) but it will have a standard stock set of planet types and creature parts, which may not be quite as rich and adaptable as th
  • I'd like to know exactly what the Wii can offer to this game over the PC version. As far as I can tell it offers nothing, at least not without fundamentally changing gameplay to accomodate the Wii controller. As far as I'm concerned, the mouse will be just as good, if not superior to the Wii, at least for Spore. The Wii certainly will have the advantage over other consoles, but I think people really have unrealistic expectations about that controller.

    My main concern here is that this is going to be yet anot
    • well said, plus the games interface will be 'consoled' to fit a tiny res TV screen, despite the fact that PC monitors are getting bigger, and most of us are running 1024 or 1280 desktops.
      It won't happen though, the beancounters will estimate a 7.24% revenue rise from simultaneous release, and the game will look like all games do when they are ported from a console to the PC.
      Grrrrrrrrrrr.
        • "Most people" and "Most people who will be playing Spore" are two very different groups. ...and if you think "most people" are still using Windows 98 or ME, you're sadly out of touch. ME has become almost noexistent over the years due to its thankfully short lifespan, and 98SE is now unsupported, meaning that those last few people clinging to it will drop it as soon as unpatched vulnerabilities start presenting themselves.
        • most people are not running 1024 or 1280 desktops...most are still running 800 or at most 1024.

          let's correct your statement for you...
          This here rather large poll of PC gamers (courtesy of steam) returns that most gamers use either 1024 or 1280.
          http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html [steampowered.com]
          A nice poll on over 700k users.
    • That is what I'd like to know... Though now that Wines dx7/8 is semi decent and I own a Mac (ppc) as well as my usual Linux boxen I'm hopeful I can play this game 0 day. It's at the top of the list of games I'm paying for this year/next which is impressive as its knocked ut2k7 from that position. And note I'm not one for paying for games that aren't worth it, unlike the last uber hype period (d3, hl2) I cannot wait for this set of games coming up and I've already saved up the monies to buy them all! ^_^

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