News of Spore Delay Miscommunication

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.

Obv.

[Obligatory comparison to Duke Nukem Forever]

Re:Obv.

Not only are there screenshots, but one of the best video game trailers [ign.com] for the time it was released.

that looks awesome!

holy cow! that rules! When is it due out?

Will Wright...

Should spend more time on spore and less on chessy sim city and sims ports!

Re:Will Wright...

I'll tell you what would hurt more than abandoning it -- working on it for another year and then releasing a bad game. Now, I'm a big fan of Will Wright's previous games, and I'm sure hoping that Spore will be great, but lots of great game designers have made really bad games in the past.

Remember Daikatana? It's possible to delay a bad game again and again, and still end up releasing a bad game. If EA can't make Spore into a good game, it would still be better to cancel it.

Spore

We have a new contender for vaporware that may be able to challenge Duke Nuke'em Forever. Spore Forever!

Re:Spore

DNF was announced in 1997. That's *ten* years. If it's 2015 and Spore still isn't out, then maybe.

There's a great quote on bash.org somewhere (can't get to the site now at work), something like "I bet in 1998 you'd have never guessed that you'd get married before Duke Nukem Forever came out". As someone who got married a year and half ago, I can definitely relate.

Jee...

didn't see that one coming.

Another disappointment

This fuels my fear that Spore will be another in a long line of games that sound absolutely fantastic in terms of potential, but end up terribly disappointing. I'm excited as hell about Spore and I'm hoping that the release push-back just represents an intent to release the game only when its potential has been realised. Blizzard tends to have this attitude (although they're smart enough not to talk release dates until they're pretty solid) so hope springs eternal.

Still, on balance, I'd prefer that a game be delayed and subsequently released in good form, rather than the developers saying "the hell with it" and releasing a half-baked version.

Re:Another disappointment

Spore isn't going to be one more disappointing game. From my grasp of the demo it's going to be 9 more disappointing games and some loose connective tissue.

No editorialising here

Notice the summary only mentions the second of the three guesses in the referenced article. At least try and give some kind of balance.

Fiscal 2009, not calendar 2009

The fiscal year for EA begins in April, so this is really April 2008.

fiscal year

That's a misnomer. EA's fiscal year ends march 31st. So the question is when does the year start? Meaning does fiscal 2008 start April 2007? If that's the case it's still tentative for 2008. The ever-so-fiscally savvy blog doesn't mention anything pertaining to this.

And when the fuck are we taking news off of blogs and not trade pubs?

We're such suckers...

I don't mean just about this game, specifically, but how many times are we shown a pre-rendered video or told a "target" release date for the sole purpose of keeping our interest piqued for a game that hasn't even a remote chance of getting out on time (i.e. Spore) or never looking like that (the PS3 pre-renders a couple of E3's ago)...and we never learn.

Buzzkill

It's a huge game from a huge name, and if EA is hoping to piggy-back a big announcement using the buzz of the game's release, it could be a good business decision to let the game sit for a while.

Someone should let EA know that buzz isn't a fixed quantity. You think you have it one day, and then in 2 years buzz depreciates into "just another game."

this is kinda obligatory...

My guess is that Spore will just end up being a mini-game in Duke Nukem Forever.

Re:this is kinda obligatory...

The funny part is, it's already a mini game in Sims 2 Pets for Wii -- you can have your Sim play Spore on their PC. Just click on the pc, select play game, and spore.

Lucky ass sims...

Spore

The problem is the game was too ambitious to start off with. I bet they got to the point in development when they realized all this freedom is really hard to develop and implement. Now were going to see a game where it seems like they cut off our leg and we just walk in circles.

As long as it's worth the delay, it's fine by me.

I don't care if they keep pushing it out as long as it's worth the wait. There have been too many examples of games that were totally destroyed because the publisher/developer demanded holding firm to an unrealistic release date. One of the most well known was that abomination called Ultima: Ascension that still was unplayeable even after several patches. EA demanded that it be released about 1 year before it should have been in order to meet the Christmas market for that year, and what a piece of sh!t that turned out to be.

In this case, if the Spore developers need more time to make the game bug-free and worthy of my dollars, I'll gladly grant them that time. Now, if it goes to the level of delays that we're seeing with DNF, that's a different story.

quoting Shigery Miyamoto...

"A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever."

Re:quoting Shigery Miyamoto...

And sometimes a delayed game is bad and outdated.

Fable

I remember promises of what Fable was going to be and even looking back at screens that were taken nearly two years before its release. The game looked complete then, but what I played (while still awesome) wasn't what i had originally expected. It was extremely ambitious for its time. Most of what was promised or speculated to be in there was included in the final product, but the way it panned out in-game didn't feel as much of a free-will type of deal. This isn't my gripe about Fable, but merely my prediction that spore will either need lots more time to develop or will eventually be "dumbed down."

Computer upgrade

Sweet! Now the computer that I just built to handle the latest generation of games has plenty of time to become obsolete before Spore comes out.

Now... where'd I leave that noose?

Good.

Good.

Again, I repeat that I would rather a game like this be delayed until it's a good game, than rushed and buggy. Rushed and buggy seems pretty common these days, and if delaying until 2009 is what it takes to finish the game, then more power to them - I've got plenty of stuff to look forward to playing in the meantime.

Allow Me to Speculate

As if anybody needed permission for that. Spore the next Sims? Self-delusion to the max! My guess is they playtested the thing and found nobody could make heads or tails of it. Spore is essentially a tech demo for procedural content generation algorithms.

I haven't looked forward ...

... to a game like this since I read the pre-release hype about Halo. Now I'm just waiting for MS to buy EA Games and make Spore Xbox360 only or Vista only (meaning I'll probably never buy it).

Change in Game Development

I vaguely recall that Spore was suppose to be some kind of big change in the way games are developed. Something about focus on letting users create the content, decrease the art assets needed, etc. Doesn't it use like procedural textures and whatnot? I guess maybe it hasn't turned out to be such a revolution on the development side after all. (For some reason I was always under the impression that Spore was suppose to have more of an impact on how games are made rather than on how games are played... maybe I was just misinformed.)

Be patient

These things take time to evolve.

Duke Spore

Forever? Reminds me on Ultima 9...

The diff tween Will Wright and Molyneux is

Will Wright delivers.

If it isn't ready, that's because it isn't ready.

That said, Wii Sims (or Mii Sims for the Wii, aka Animal Crossing does Anime on the Wii) is still coming out in a month.

I can live with that.

KWANZAI OVERDOSE!

article is bogus

EA says otherwise. [next-gen.biz]

Will Wright Quote...

In an interview for GameBotherer magazine, Will Wright stated:

Well, since we started Spore a lot's happened in the industry. XPSP2 came out, making PCs safe again, then Vista with all the DirectX-10 goodness and even Apple's relevant for gaming now. Hell - consoles are amazing these days! Have you seen what the PS3 can do? Sure it's a bugger to program for, but you've got like three or six or some other number of processors in that thing! We're just not sure what to develop for though - there are too many options now.

We figure we should give it another three to five years and see which way the wind's blowing before committing to a release date. We'll probably rewrite the code a few times to pick up all the other platforms - PS3, Macs, Wii, Gamecube, Nintendo-64, Sega Megadrive, some toaster that Tim worked out how to program for and maybe, if we can find time and have nothing better to do, maybe Linux as well. But don't quote me on that last one.

EA is about to make you his bitch

I guess 2009 will be most exciting year in computing history. Not only it'll be the year of the Linux desktop, but we'll see a simultaneous release of:

- Spore
- Duke Nukem Forever
- GNU Hurd
- Perl 6
- PHP 6
- Python 3000
- Bytecode compiled Ruby

Spore Evolution...

They could release an evoluting game thats a great concept.
Each week they could release a patch to add features to the game.

Or maybe the programmers are writing the code for the 32 cores with 128-bit Intel Core 4 with Windows Vista Reloaded 2
you know just to be prepared... and what about DirectX 12?
you didnt see that coming!!!!
DAMN... another 5 years more....

EA: Spore Delay "Misinformation"

Apparently the article is just a bunch of "user generated procedural content", i.e. bullshit. c(-;

-Don

EA: Spore Delay "Misinformation" [next-gen.biz]

Reports that Electronic Arts' highly anticipated Spore has been further delayed are "misinformation," the publisher told Next-Gen today. ImageIt's one of the most anticipated games of today, and any word of further delay for Will Wright's Spore is sure to make headlines.

But reports making rounds today are basically old news being made into "new" news, EA said.

"There seems to be some misinformation flying around," explained a rep in a phone interview. "Nothing's changed since our call on May 8, where [CEO] John Riccitello specifically said that we were moving Spore from fiscal '08 to early fiscal '09."

EA's fiscal 2009 runs from April 2008 through March 2009.

During that May earnings call, Riccitello stated, "...Spore is a title we have enormous confidence in. I've had the chance to review the title three times in the my short return to EA and it looks fantastic. I will also tell you that it's right up [to] the bubble in Q4 [of fiscal '08], if not sometime in early fiscal '09, so we don't feel comfortable in forecasting it."

There has yet to be a firm announced released date for Spore. An "early fiscal '09" release means that the game could theoretically launch in spring 2008.

The rep said that the rumor of the additional delay was exacerbated by a quote making the rounds in the games press lifted from the latest issue of Game Informer which says that the game is "delayed indefinitely." Apparently, the information from the conference call was misconstrued, the rep determined.

"It's the same information we said in May. Spore's progressing and it looks great," she added.

FISCAL 2009...

Includes three seasons in the year 2008. We could see this game as early as May 2008.

In 20 years

From the the Future of Games article : "In 20 years, players will look back at Will Wright's Spore as the game that ushered in the era of user-generated content."

Heh, in 20 years, players will look at Will Wright's Spore and say, "Can't wait till it comes out!"

Maybe a PS3 for me when it arrives!

I'll consider getting a PS3 just to run this game. On paper and screen, Spore looks like the next addiction.

Well - unless I get that next-gen iMac 24" that is..

Re:HAHAHAHAHAHA

I dunno, I can see the latter if it sucks or is cancelled altogether.