Spore Delayed Until Q2 2008 107
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.
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?"