Spore Revolution

Spore for Xbox 360, Sony PS3 or Nintendo Wii

These titles are a bit confusing.  When I first saw this headline I thought, omg, its coming out for all 3!  And it very well might, but the only thing that has been confirmed is that Spore will be developed for more consoles.  It's been confirmed for PC and DS, but for the other consoles we don't know which ones yet. What we do know is that they won't be released for the other consoles until well after they are launched for PC and Nintendo DS.   Here is the article I first found, dated August 26th, and its source.

Spore Release Date Pushed - Again!

According to this article published on August 1st by Next Generation by Kris Graft, entitled EA: Spore Will Ship When It's Done, Spore is going to be released in the early fiscal 2009 timeframe.  It was also noted that the game wouldn't be released before its finished.  EA's 2009 fiscal year starts in April 2008 and ends in March 2009, so April 2008 is the new release date.

It had been pushed just recently before that in May, for the end of this fiscal year.. or by April 2008. It would seem that release dates being pushed is about the only news we're getting! Right now, according to an interview with IGN's Dan Adams on July 10th, it shouldn't be too far beyond April 2008 since they are in the alpha stage. With the current trends though, I don't think it'll be released til December 2008.. Make that 2009.  And thats because they want to get it right.  This is both good news and bad news.... Good news because we are all looking forward to an awesome experience and want the job done right, and bad news because we've been hearing about Spore for years already!  It is very frustrating, to say the least. After all this excitement and let downs, there is still something left to be excited about...

Ricitiello said, "We will make the choice of shipping a better game than an on-time game given the high potential for this franchise."

In other words, once Spore is released we are going to hear so much about it that it will make us sick!  :D We know for sure that there will be a Nintendo DS version, but it will not be compatible with the PC version.

Spore for All Consoles

Will Wright was interviewed my Spong.com recently, and an article entitled Exclusive: Spore Heading to Console was published Aug 2nd 2006. The article is mostly a confirmation that they will branch out to many of the current consoles, but which consoles they were going to develop spore for specifically wasn't said.  Will Wright did mention Wii, PS3, and XBox 360. He also mentions that some consoles might just have certain parts of the game.   

I think the most interesting comment from this article is how Will Wright points out that Spore is more like a franchise than a game. This would make sense since he'd not only like the game for all consoles, but there is the possibility of 3D figurines and a card game.

Only Aug 4th, a new article appeared on Spong.com entitled EA Denies Concrete Spore Plans.  I also want to mention here that in the past, Will Wright has said that Spore would probably be his last game project and now I see that there is a little tug-o-war going on there. Seems like EA has to keep covering their butts after Will Wright has been interviewed!

Dust of E3

E3 has come to an end for a week now and the dust has settled.  There has been no big news out yet since, but there are tons of articles out on the web saying the same things as articles I have already posted.  Here is the latest article:

The Annual E3 Awards: 2006 published on May 18th 2006 by GameSpy.com.  Spore ranks as the #2 PC game, newcomer Bioschock being #1.  Bioshock currently does not have a website.  Spore did not rank in any other platforms since  they are till working on the PC version. Will Wright does say that they will be coming out on all platforms, so you can probably look for it on cell phones, Wii, X360, PS3, DS, PSP, and possibly even Mac.  When concrete news of this has been released, I will post. 

New Gameplay Video on GameTrailer.com that was published on May 17th 2006. It is the second video on their list.  I think this is one of the best gameplay video's available.  It shows every phase of evolution and some of their transitions, wars on your planet, abduction, colonizing other planets, as well as destroying other planets.  This video is a must see! 

Spore System Requirements

There has been no word really as of yet what the minimum system requirements of Spore will be.  Most of us can only assume, and after seeing Will Wright's joke specifications we can only hope that it will be much less.  Here are the prototype front and back covers he made for his game which he had initially named SimEverything.

After some research by looking at some of the most popular games of today, I came up with the following specifications.  The 3D engine of Spore may be a brand new one, but its gameplay may not be more demanding on the computer than games such as the Sims 2 or World of WarCraft.  Also, having the Internet is not required but for a full Spore experience it is recommended.  I have increased some specifications due to Spore being cutting edge, but not by much so that the game can continue being mainstream. 

What I think the minimum system requirements should be:

• OS: Windows 2000, XP, ME or Vista.
• 1 GHz processor or better.  Current popular games require at least 800MHz.
• 512 MB of RAM or more.
• 64 MB 3D graphics card. Current popular games require at least 32 MB, but the more video memory the better!
• At least 6 GB of hard drive space.

Happy Easter everyone!

Spore for Handheld Devices

I found an article that says that Spore will also be for Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, and some mobile phones.  I am seriously wondering how it is going to be played on my cell phone, maybe I need to get one of those $500 phones? lol  The article is called Spore coming to DS, PSP, Phones, published March 23rd 2006 by NintendoDS Advanced.   The article also says that Will Wright may also be looking to have it for the XBox 360 and Nintendo Revolution as well which is very exciting news.

If you take a close look at the game pad for the Nintendo DS, there are not very many buttons to press. This leads me to believe that the gameplay will be relatively easy, making it probably more of a strategy game than anything else. There is no way it could possibly be as complex as a game such as World of WarCraft.