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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.
[Obligatory comparison to Duke Nukem Forever]
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.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
The fiscal year for EA begins in April, so this is really April 2008.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
I don't mean just about this game, specifically, but how many times are we shown a pre-rendered video or told a "target" release date for the sole purpose of keeping our interest piqued for a game that hasn't even a remote chance of getting out on time (i.e. Spore) or never looking like that (the PS3 pre-renders a couple of E3's ago)...and we never learn.
My guess is that Spore will just end up being a mini-game in Duke Nukem Forever.
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.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
"A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever."
holy cow! that rules! When is it due out?
I'll tell you what would hurt more than abandoning it -- working on it for another year and then releasing a bad game. Now, I'm a big fan of Will Wright's previous games, and I'm sure hoping that Spore will be great, but lots of great game designers have made really bad games in the past.
Remember Daikatana? It's possible to delay a bad game again and again, and still end up releasing a bad game. If EA can't make Spore into a good game, it would still be better to cancel it.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
These things take time to evolve.
EA says otherwise.
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
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.