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.

Comments

Spore

[MorpheousMarty]

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

Re:Spore

[syrinx]

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.

this is kinda obligatory...

[wooden pickle]

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

Re:this is kinda obligatory...

[wiggles]

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...

Re:Another disappointment

[JMZero]

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.

Re:Fiscal 2009, not calendar 2009

[C64]

So we should expect an April 1st, 2008 release?

that looks awesome!

[oni]

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

Be patient

[naoursla]

These things take time to evolve.

Will Wright Quote...

[GaryPatterson]

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

[Wiseman1024]

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

In 20 years

[4D6963]

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!"