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Will Wright's Spore To Release Sept. 7th

Posted by Zonk on Tue Feb 12, 2008 03:46 PM
from the master-of-the-universe dept.
Games
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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[+] Will Wright's Next Game: Spore 41 comments
1up.com has a look at Will Wright's newest game, revealed today at the Game Developer's conference. Entitled Spore, the game promises to be (in a word) unique. From the article: "Wright's latest creation spans the rise of a space-faring civilization from its humble beginnings in the primordial soup. 'It's actually a lot like WarioWare...It features a wide variety of game types as a sort of homage to my favorite games.'" PC Magazine has details as well, as does Gamasutra.
[+] Spore Coming to Consoles? 61 comments
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.'"
[+] 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.
[+] 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.'"
[+] Spore Hands-On Preview 192 comments
cardjoe writes "The release date for Spore has just been announced and what better way to celebrate than to check out the latest build of the game? That's just what bit-tech.net did, spending hours with the full version of the game. The article covers all the different editors and stages in the game as well as providing a brief on the pollinated content and how it may well introduce an entire new genre to PC gaming — that of the Massively Online Singleplayer. The article is in-depth and has a whole load of brand new screenshots too, showing the various stages that the player will go through as they play the game and move their creature from single cells to galaxy-hopping space freaks."
[+] EA Loosens Spore, Mass Effect DRM 249 comments
An anonymous reader writes "In response to recent criticism, EA has decided to eliminate the periodic validation of Mass Effect and Spore. 'Specifically, EA's plan to dial in to game owner's computers every ten days to check whether they were running a legitimate version of their software has been scrapped, ShackNews reports. EA had planned to use the validation method for upcoming titles Mass Effect and Spore. EA now says that validation will now only occur when a user attempts to download new content for either game. Chief among the voices in opposition to this measure were members of the armed forces, who pointed out that they could not rely on having an internet connection every ten days.'"
[+] Spore System Specs Released, Creature Creator Coming Soon 65 comments
Will Wright's long-awaited game, Spore, seems to be nearing completion, with a release slated for September. In anticipation of this release, EA has outlined the system requirements and will still be releasing their Creature Creator demo for experimentation on June 17th.
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  • Happy Darwin Day (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Plazmid (1132467) on Tuesday February 12, @03:50PM (#22395980)
    Strange, they released the release date for an evolution game on Darwin Day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Day [wikipedia.org]

  • The Soul of The Sims (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SimHacker (180785) on Tuesday February 12, @03:58PM (#22396096) Homepage Journal

    The Soul of The Sims, by Will Wright [donhopkins.com]
    Macintosh HD:XmotiveHarness:src/Motive.c
    Tuesday, January 28, 1997 / 9:25 AM

    This is the prototype for the soul of The Sims, which Will Wright wrote on January 23, 1997.

    I had just started working at the Maxis Core Technology Group on "Project X" aka "Dollhouse", and Will Wright brought this code in one morning, to demonstrate his design for the motives, feedback loop and failure conditions of the simulated people. While going through old papers, I ran across this print-out that I had saved, so I scanned it and cleaned the images up, and got permission from Will to publish it.

    This code is a interesting example of game design, programming and prototyping techniques. The Sims code has certainly changed a lot since Will wrote this original prototype code. For example, there is no longer any "stress" motive. And the game doesn't store motives in global variables, of course.

    My hope is that this code will give you a glimpse of how Will Wright designs games, and what was going on in his head at the time!

    Read The Soul of The Sims code here... [donhopkins.com]

    -Don

  • I heard they are going to package it together with Duke Nukem Forever! Hooray!

    Bring on the vaporware!

  • Wii version has been announced, per TFA (Score:5, Informative)

    by randyest (589159) on Tuesday February 12, @04:17PM (#22396390) Homepage
    Did the story submitter RTFA?

    The summary:

    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.


    The article:

    A Wii version has already been announced. What can you say about what that's going to play like in terms of structure, control, etc.?

    I can't say much about it except the fact that the overriding kind of factor in my mind and Lucy [Bradshaw]'s, in terms of looking at what direction that team goes with it, has been to make really good use of the controller. What interests me about the Wii is that in some sense you have a much higher bandwith controller than you have with any other console or even a PC. How do we abstract the maximum Because one of the biggest advantages we have is our procedural animation system, which means that we can have an infinite of variety of animations that we can make the creature do because it's done procedurally. So that's a natural kind of strength of having a higher bandwith input device--it should really feel like I'm puppeteering this creature very directly, as opposed to I'm just indirectly controlling with a few buttons here and there. The rest of the design is totally going to evolve around that.


    These are contradictory. I think I'll go with the story itself.

    Also, something out on a cellphone before major consoles? That seems odd -- is it a first?

  • Will Wright's Spore To Release Sept. 7th (Score:5, Funny)

    by CopaceticOpus (965603) on Tuesday February 12, @04:27PM (#22396518)
    ...so wear a raincoat?

  • A long wait, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by elysiana (1152995) on Tuesday February 12, @04:35PM (#22396638)
    So we've got those who complain about companies releasing a product before it's ready, and then we've got those who complain that a product is taking too long to come out. I'd like to think that Spore is one of those games that's going to have playability over a large range of ages - you're not going to outgrow it. Sure, we're not getting any younger, but you gotta admit you still wanna have a crack at it, and you still will when it's finally released.

    Has it taken a long time from concept to completion? Yeah, that's a pitfall they've encountered. Maybe their timing is good, though - the MMO world has calmed down a bit, the Wii isn't as brand-spanking-new, people have done Bioshock... now there's something new to anticipate and it's not competing against the "biggies" we've had lately. Granted, in the months to come we may find that new hardware and games are going to challenge it. But think of it this way - it's certainly piqued your interest, right? Controversy means people will take a look at it, just to find out what the fuss is about.

    If the game is good enough, it doesn't matter when it's released - it's not going to miss the boat because it's not trying to ride a fad. In the meantime, we can still play the games we've been playing. No need to hop from one game to the next constantly, just sit back and enjoy what you're playing... when Spore comes out, you'll be ready for it, and maybe you can take the time to play it out and appreciate what it is, rather than whipping through and waiting for the next late-release game.

  • Blue Balls (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anne_Nonymous (313852) on Tuesday February 12, @04:48PM (#22396910) Homepage Journal
    >> Will Wright's Spore To Release Sept. 7th

    If he waits that long, he's going to have a hell of a case of blue balls.

  • Tell me why I should care about WW's "Spore" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HomerJ (11142) on Tuesday February 12, @05:23PM (#22397558)
    This game has been marketed to death as some Will Wright masterpiece. What exactly has Will Wright done other than an early 80's game about building a city, and a game who's main purpose is to wash dishes and trap people in a pool?

    I'm not saying Spore will be good or bad, but I'm not buying a game who's sole reason for hype is a guy who's managed to make two franchises and milk them to death in a way that makes Nintendo jealous.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You can trivialize anyone's accomplishments with that attitude. Examples:

      What exactly did Einstein ever do aside from work in a patent office and publish a few papers?

      What exactly did Linus Torvalds ever do aside from start a UNIXoid kernel?

      What exactly di

    • Re:Great... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12, @04:02PM (#22396170)
      "I no longer use a PC" - What did you make your website with? A pencil and pad?

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by ericdfields (638772)
        PC == the incorrect but general term applied to a Windows computer, as opposed to a Mac. "iTunes. Available for Mac or PC," for example. I see that spore IS coming out for Mac, but smeh... its still sunny outside in September.

    • Re:Great... (Score:4, Informative)

      by hansamurai (907719) <hansamurai@gmail.com> on Tuesday February 12, @04:16PM (#22396372) Homepage Journal
      Ah, the game has been delayed less than a year (if Sept. 7 is the true date).

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Spore#Release_date_delays [wikipedia.org]

      The first release period was announced to be January to March of 2008.

      The game was originally shown at the Game Developers Conference in early 2005, but other than "we hope to get the game out soon" there was nothing solid until what was stated above.

      • Re:Great... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ivan256 (17499) on Tuesday February 12, @05:51PM (#22398088)
        It seems like the project took an average amount of time, and they just turned on the hype engine way too soon.

        Game makers should learn that the longer the period of hype, the higher the expectations. Let's hope, for the developer's sake, that this game is really extraordinary, because after all the hype, "good", or even "great" won't be good enough.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by vertinox (846076)
      I no longer use a PC, and I'm no longer in college. Most of my free time is spent away from the computer, doing errands (food, misc. real life stuff), or spending time with my wonderful girlfriend.

      For some reason I suspect you drink a lot, take zoloft, or

    • Re:Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pojut (1027544) on Tuesday February 12, @04:39PM (#22396732) Homepage
      Other than so-called Madden Gamers and Halo-fiends, nearly every gamer is looking forward to this. How do I know this?

      Because unlike some other developers, when Will Wright says he is implementing some crazy idea into a game, he actually implements it and implements it well. Not to suck the man's pecker, but the possibilities of a game like Spore are quite beyond anything previuosly conceived in the interactive entertainment world. Just read through interviews with him about it, or better yet just read through the Wikipedia article about it. I don't mean skim over it, I mean sit down and truly read it and absorb everything that this game is aspiring to do (and, based on what Will Wright is saying, is doing successfully.)

      When you look at what he is hoping to accomplish in this game, and what he is saying is already there and in somewhat playable form... itwould have been impossible even just a decade ago. His early description of it by calling it "Sim Everything" seems like it will be an accurate label.

      Lastly, keep in mind that the ONLY thing that we have any sort of details about are when you are still in the cell-sized areas of the game. If they are putting this much detail into what is happening when you are the size of an amoeba, imagine what the rest of it could possbily be like...

      I know I sound like some sniviling Will Wright fanboy who wants anything the man releases, but again...go and really read about what this game is trying to accomplish. It's mind boggling.
    • If you are releasing spore through your genitals...well...let's just say you need to get that checked out.

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