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Spore to be PC Only, For Now
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."
so does this mean i'm going to have to use BootCamp to play spore? screw that, i'm not following the hype! :P
How would Spore be adapted to the Gameboy? Obviously there is more to it than just porting the software.
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PC gaming is dying out. It's totally a niche market now.
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What about Mac OS X? Yeah, I know, boot into Windows. Bleah.
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If it sells at all, this will be on every platform at some point. EA ports damn near every game to every platform.
So PC only does that mean only Windows based PC's or does that include other Operating Systems?
I hate it when people use PC as a title for Windows only Computers. PC stands for Personal Computer. That includes all operating systems. So when this Article states it is PC only are they really meaning Windows only or just that it won't be available on consoles?
Self proclaimed wannabe geek. You know how it is. Most of us who read this stuff probably fit in that category.
They've realized that they've spend most of the budget and need to start cashing in now. So Spore will be released for the biggest market first, and they'll focus mostly on that, until they have recovered some of their expenses.
Then it'll come to the other markets.
So my guess is that spore will be released faster for pc, but might be slightly overpriced.
This will probably mean they will lower prices faster than a simultanous launch (not necessarily true) and that the other targets will be slightly lower priced than their first expectations.
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
You heard it here first. And since it will be a flop, you are not likely to see it on any other platform.
Will Wright being who he is, he can have flops here and there. I just hope he returns to the Sim City series and gives that the attention it needs.
subsidized by Microsoft...
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Mod parent down. EA may not port it's games to mac by itself, but Aspyr sure does. You'll notice Will Wright's previous big project at EA, The Sims 2, on the front page. It's even a universal binary, for those with intel processors.
As soon as Spore hits the Mac, I'll get it.
My concern is that for a sandbox game to be fulfilling/addictive, my late game state needs to be influenced somehow by my earlier decisions: I don't just "pass through" the protist: the decisions I make need to impact the later game or else be meaningless. Why not just start out with a later organism, since what I do earlier doesn't matter? Or is that the point?
In SimCity, the very first building that was ever built still exists in the later game and I'm still left with its consequences. The decision to break the game into distinctive "zones" as I see it makes this more of an issue than SimCity.
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Dude, you are beating a dead horse. Actually that horse is not only dead, it is decayed, sunk into the primordial ooze and fossilized in 40 million year old limestone.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
There they speak about how it will be released for the Wii, PS3, and xBox360 most likely three to six months after coming out for PC. They also talk about how they always release the Mac versions a few months later (they just released Sims2:OFB for the Mac six months after the PC version).
No postings there to contradict any of this.
Therefore, the conclusion should be that it will be released for WinXP on schedule, and have console versions shortly thereafter.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I mean, by definition, a PC could be a Win/Lin machine, a Mac or an Xbox.
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They've realized that they've spend most of the budget and need to start cashing in now
Not necessarily. Just examine the Sims and Sims 2 rollouts, and expansions. In all cases, right before a major release, they stop talking about the other platforms it will be released on, and talk about the platform that's going into release in the next month or two.
What this means, in short, is that they want you to buy Spore for the PC first. Sure, it will be available in a Mac port about six months later, and on consoles about 3-6 months later, but they want you to buy the version of Spore that's in betatest and almost ready to go.
Now, if you don't have a PC, don't fret. It will be released on the other platforms, they just won't talk about them until it's been out for probably 30 days (to get maximum buying of that version). This also allows them to bug fix for the other versions, in terms of playability - any obvious problems/glitches will magically disappear in the later releases. The advantage of the PC version releasing first is they usually post the patches to that online as well.
I'm still planning on waiting until Spore for the Wii comes out. I'm not buying a new laptop this year, and if it doesn't run on a Wii or a Mac mini or my (supposedly old) WinXP laptop, I'm not paying for it. But I will buy Spore.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
But will Will Wright Make me his bitch?
Im sure theres a lesson somewhere in that sentence.
Will it run on Linux?
Hopefully wine/cedega will come to our rescue on this one.
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I can't say I am really suprised by this, after following the development of this game for a long time it was beginning to become clear that not only will the development process be long and laborious but there will be a substantial period after it is complete (either in internal testing, open beta testing or patching after release) needed to perfect it. I think it's definitely a smart idea, so they will be able to fix any problems and tweak the gameplay for it to be perfect before they head for the mass markets of the consoles (after all, PC games are a lot more easy to patch and easier to get the users to do so than consoles, especially handhelds).
Business Voyeur
I've wondered about this for quite some time now. I realize that a Wine/Cedega-compatible game isn't the same as a genuine Linux release, but would it really be difficult to make games that are tested to be compatible with Wine/Cedega? Yes, I know that the die-hard Linux users would prefer a true, Linux binary for their games -- and I understand that completely. (Chances are that the game would run better anyway, but I digress...)
Wouldn't these game companies at least be increasing their market share, even slightly, by going the extra effort to make their games Wine/Cedega compatible if they've already determined that they won't release the game with native, Linux binaries? I would think that a "cetification" logo on the game box would go a long way to at least gaining a segment of Linux gamers...or is there already such a thing but I just don't see it because too few game companies do this?
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I used to be a PS2 fanboy, but this is the MUST-HAVE game that's finally going to drive me to buy a PC game system!
;)
Schweet!
No game that has been hyped up this much can survive. There is no way that Spore can live up to the expectations. If it's not the most fun anyone has ever had in their lives instantly upon turning it on, it will be a "noble failure" or an "interesting experiment." Or "crap."
It's a game. There is a 9 out of 10 chance that it will be an fun little game that doesn't shatter people's minds. And there is nothing wrong with that. And if it does really well, that's great too. But by hyping it up to the point that "we know that EA is going to port it to every platform known to man," we're dooming that not to happen.
It's not the second coming. It's not even the second Halo. It's a dollhouse game that's so big the average person might not be able to wrap their minds around. It also violates a lot of the basic tenets of game design, and nobody knows if that issue has been solved satisfactorily.
So again, we'll see. Don't hype it up too much, or you'll kill it.
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"So PC means no Mac".
Says it all really. You bought an Apple or an IBM PC back in the days when dinosaurs walked the earth and work was uphill in the snow both ways.
While the Apple II was indeed a personal computer it was not a PC. The IBM Personal Computer was. The capital letters make all the difference. Think of it as the different between a Jeep and jeep. One is the brand and a type, the other is just a type. No their ain't any real difference but in the history of the personal computer I think most people have come to understand that it is PC (IBM PC Compatible (actually Intel compatible hardware and Microsoft software) vs Mac (Apple machines + their OS).
This makes things easier. People nowadays talk about a PC (windows machine) Mac (OS-X machine) or a Linux box (Obviously a Linux machine). Note that the actuall hardware inside is off little interest anymore. Yeah yeah you can hold a long rant about how your Linux box or Mac is also a PC but all you are doing is making things confusing.
As for the game coming out on the Mac, haven't most of the sim games come out sooner or later?
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EA hopes that Spore will be another The Sims. That means a game that can be played by the non-hardcore gamer (read unlikely to pirate) on the PC they got anyway's (I am pretty sure that you have a PC as you can be pretty sure I have one. But neither of us can make any educated guess as to wich game console we own if any, if you can't see why you and I very likely have a PC then you don't belong here).
There are more PC's out there then ALL the consoles combined. There is a reason after all that it is MS that can afford to subsidise it's game console to such an extreme.
If Spore is indeed capable of running on older hardware as The Sims was/is then it could possible repeat its success. An important thing to remember is that The Sims was never ported. Or rather the game was but not THE GAME. A large part of The Sims "experience" is the user made content. Clothes, furniture, models etc etc made by users for users. User made content by the way wich often makes use of the latest feature in the expansion packs making sure that even if all your game content is from users you still need to buy the packs.
This part of The Sims was never copied on the consoles. Maybe this will change but only if the console companies get their head out of their asses.
The PC is the biggest POTENTIAL market because of install base. It is just that most of the game industy is totally incapable of tapping into that market. Will Wright certainly has proven capable in the past. As have others. What are the most played games? FPS? RTS? RPG? No, flash card games on the web. Played on a PC. (or mac or linux box).
The PC market ain't what it used to be but I think this is more due to the game companies then the market itself. You currently have all these stories about the 360 and PS3 and Wii production and how they won't(didn't) have enough for launch. Now ask yourselve this during all this time how many machins have the various PC makers pumped out? All potential market. Count the number of 360's, the only console capable of meeting the specs of a 2 year old PC vs the number of PC's no older then two years (to ensure capable hardware). Now ask yourselve again, wich is the biggest potential market that a Will Wright game could tap into?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Will Wright games flop because they are too out there or just not fun but they deliver what was promised. SimCopter did exactly what it said on the box, just that nobody seemed to give a shit. So it flopped just like a lot of the other SimX games did when Maxis pumped them out by the bucketload. BUT for all their weirdness and niche market appeal they did "work" and did what they were supposed to do. More or less.
B&W and Dungeon Keeper and Fable were all games were Peter Molyneux was going to do lots and lots of stuff that was going to change gaming forever and then we ended up with games that not only didn't change gaming but in many ways actually were worse then other games in the same genre. (Wich romance method do you prefer? Fable or Kotor? Wich fame, Fable or Baldur's gate statues?)
Will Wright at least in my memory has never hyped his games in similar way until now. Were peter has failed us many times and I at least therefore am very skeptical of anything he says, Will Wright is for me a guy who so far has deliverd fun but (to me) limited appeal games that did what he said they would do. So I have no reason to doubt him.
Doesn't mean it will be a success but I think it is very unfair of you to compare Spore to Black & White.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What PC games fail to notice that in fact this statement actually reads "get those PC gamer suckers to beta test this game for us and pay for it. After it works we can release on the consoles where the real money is." Why not? because that is the case will ALL pc games today, they never work on the first release.
I run osx and I don't even want to think about how much time WoW sucked from me before I got it under control. If this game is even half as good as everyone says it might be then the longer it stays a PC-only game the better!