Tag Archives: spore

EA’s sounded the bargin siren, pricing the original Mass Effect and Dead Space for £3 on Origin, while its sequels are £10 and £7 respectively. Dragon Age 2 and Mirror’s Edge are also in on the deal at a fiver a pop, while Spore’s available for £6 and Bulletstorm at £7.50. The deal’s available for a limited time, though, so get to it.

Via EG.

EA has released a new trailer for Darkspore full of gameplay footage.

It’s below the break.

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Organizers of San Diego Comic Con updated the event’s website today with panel information for Saturday, July 24.

Interestingly enough, one of the panels will reveal the new game in the Spore series.

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Another day, another gaming trademark filed.

This time, it’s EA and the trademarks filed are for something called Darkspore.

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EA confirmed in its Q3 FY10 financial release Spore will be coming to the consoles in Q4 FY ’11, which means it’ll be out between January-March next year.

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EA and Dr Pepper are teaming up to offer people gaming codes for chugging the popular soft drink.

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Twentieth Century Fox plans to make a CG-animated movie based on EA’s Spore, according to a Variety report.

Ice Age’s Chris Wedge is set to direct, and scriptwriters Greg Erb and Jason Oremland are on board as well.

Blue Sky Studios (Ice Age, Robots) will handle the CG bit, while EA’s Patrick O’Brien and Maxis’ Lucy Bradshaw are executive producers.

“From every perspective — visually, thematically and comedically — the world of Spore provides the potential to put something truly original on the screen, said Wedge.

“With more than 100 million unique creatures uploaded to our website, it’s clear that people are passionate about the game, and it will be exciting to offer a powerful medium like film in order to expand their experience with Spore,” said Bradshaw.

More through the links.

Thanks, Joystiq.

EA has confirmed that it has laid-off staff members at Sims and Spore developer EA Maxis.

“Often in the video game industry, the size of a studio fluctuates in response to business conditions,” read an official statement. “In this case, EA has taken action to reduce the workforce at Maxis as we focus the business and focus Maxis.”

No word on the number of people affected.

Thanks, Shack.

EA has announced that Spore: Galactic Adventures will have downloadable content made available from the wacky Robot Chicken folks.

The content will contain everything from angry yetis, exploding poo, librarians with rulers, and who knows what else from the demented minds of co-creators Seth Green and Matt Senreich.

“We’re big fans of Spore, so teaming up on Spore Galactic Adventures was a natural fit and so much fun for all the guys at Robot Chicken,” said Green.

“We’re all gaming geeks, so when the Spore guys said they had an alluring proposition for us, how could we say no?” added Senreich.

“Instead of creating absurd worlds with toys, this gave us the opportunity to create literally anything we wanted as gamers. Geek moment. We think that RC fans will love the pretty random and absurd adventures we created and we can’t wait to goof around with the ones the fans create.”

The Robot Chicken DLC will be free and launches on June 23 with the game.

Press release is below.
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Spore has sold more than 2 million units, EA just confirmed as part of its full-year financials.

The Maxis game was tipped as a driver in a year that saw revenue grow 15 percent to to $4.2 billion.

Spore has now seen more than 100 million creatures created for the game.

While Maxis may be celebrating, however, EA probably isn’t: the firm announced losses in excess of $1 billion for the 12 months ending March 2009 today.

More than 100 million creations have now been made in Spore, SporeIllustrated reports.

The milestone was hit yesterday at around 5:10pm EST. Give or take a minute or two.

Mental. Have you killed more people than the entire population of planet earth, though, Mr Spore? We don’t think so.

Will Wright has confirmed to GameDaily that his involvement with Spore is ongoing, despite leaving EA.

When asked if he had plans to revisit his hold franchises, he said he has entered into a consulting agreement with the publisher.

“I don’t think it was widely reported, but alongside this whole [Stupid Fun Club] thing, I also entered into a consulting agreement with EA,” he said. “I’m spending a certain amount of time every month actually working with the Spore team on future versions of Spore and expansions. So I will [still] be involved with EA on developing the Spore franchise as well.”

When asked why there as been little-to-nothing heard about a PS3 and Xbox 360 version of the creation game, Wright explained that there’s a cost issue.

“I know there’s been a lot of talk about it internally,” he admitted, “but for us it’s really an opportunity/cost issue. You know, we either do that or we continue creating new applications on the PC or we kind of go into the handheld arena. I can’t specifically say what the plans are right now, but really all these things are measured against each other.

“We can’t do everything at once, so we have to say, ‘What platforms would it kind of evolve the fastest on?’ So you can sort of look at a straight port to the PS3 and Xbox 360 and basically have the same game we have on the PC… or we could say, ‘What can we do on this platform that will help us explore different parts of the design?’ I think the Wii is really unique in that sense, with the things you can do on Wii that you can’t do on other platforms right now.

“It’s represented a lot of learning for us in terms of the directions we might take it. So I’d say that’s one of the under-appreciated aspects of how we choose to deploy this on different platforms.”

The full interview will be posted later this week, but hit the link to learn what Will wants to be included in the next iteration of Spore.

Blizzard leads the US PC charts this week, which makes a nice change. Steam and Direct2Drive results are included this time, in case you’re interested.

NPD Sales Charts February 1-7

1. World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
2. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe
3. Spore
4. World Of Warcraft Battle Chest
5. Fallout 3
6. World Of Warcraft
7. Left 4 Dead
8. Call Of Duty: World At War
9. The Sims 2 Apartment Life
10. The Sims 2 Deluxe

Steam charts as of February 17

1. Left 4 Dead
2. FEAR 2
3. Dawn Of War II
4. Counter-Strike Source
5. The Orange Box
6. Fallout 3
7. Call of Duty: World At War
8. Team Fortress 2
9. Counter-Strike
10. Grand Theft Auto IV

Direct2Drive chart as of February 17

1. Dawn of War II
2. FEAR 2
3. Rome: Total War
4. Dawn Of War I+II Special Edition
5. Sims 2 Double Deluxe
6. Fallout 3
7. Call of Duty: World At War
8. Defense Grid
9. Mass Effect
10. Civilization IV

Thanks, Kotaku

EA has announced four new Spore titles EA – two for the DS and one for the Wii, and the new PC expansion – to be launched this year.

Spore Creature Keeper (DS) should be here in the summer and appears to be aimed at a younger audience.

The next DS title, “Spore Hero Arena” is an accompaniment to the new Wii game, “Spore Hero” which will takes you “on an exciting adventure through a beautiful, colourful world,” apparently.

Then, of course, there’s the PC expansion Galactic Adventures which adds the “adventure creator” enabling players to make their own missions and share them with friends.

Full release after the break.

By Mike Bowden

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Spore senior producer Morgan Roarty has told CVG that in order for a console version of Spore to be considered the design would first have to be in place.

“I think first and foremost we’d have to have the right design,” said Roarty.

“The obvious out of the box thinking would be to port the PC product… but I don’t think that’s really the right design. [We'd] possibly go deeper into space… but in my mind, before something like that would get greenlit, it would have to be the right design.”

Roarty also said that he expects four new Spore titles in 2009.

Full interview through the link.

By Mike Bowden

In a feature titled, “The Zombies Look Better Every Year,” the New York Times has named Spore as its biggest disappointment for 2008.

“If Electronic Arts has learned anything from its experience with Spore, it ought to be that a software company should just let its games do the talking, rather than relentlessly hyping a game for years before its release only to deliver a one-note electronic toy in the end,” said the paper.

“Spore would not have fizzled so quickly if expectations had not been so ludicrously inflated to begin with.”

Game of the year? GTA IV, obviously. Worth a read.

Following a pretty conclusive rumour that Spore was about to go live on Steam earlier this week, Valve’s just confirmed that Wright’s latest, the Creepy & Cute add-on, WAR, Mass Effect, NfS Undercover and FIFA Manager 2009 are now all available on the download service.

Mirror’s Edge, Red Alert 3 and Dead Space are all to be added in the “coming weeks”.

“EA is one of the industry’s largest publishers,” said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. “The EA titles coming to Steam this holiday include some this year’s top PC titles.”

Press release after the drop.

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Simply, probably. A license agreement‘s been pointed out to us by reader Chris, featuring the word “Spore” and being hosted on Steampowered.com.

No official announcement’s been made on this as yet, but it would be fairly astonishing if it were bollocks.

Will Wright’s confirmed to Joystiq that he’s already working on a brand new game.

“I’m working on a big new project that I’m very excited about, but I don’t want to talk about it yet because if it takes three years to come out I don’t want people saying ‘Wow, he’s been talking about that for a loooong time,’” he said, talking at last night’s Spike Video Game Awards.

Spore’s only really just got going, with the game releasing in September and the first content packs making it out in the last month.

Time Magazine has published its top ten video games of the year, with GTA IV at number one.

“It’s a grade-A shoot-’em-up that doubles as an interactive novel and triples as a sly critique of American consumer culture,” says the piece.

Jonathon Blow’s platformer Braid comes in at number two, while LittleBigPlanet takes third.

The full top ten:

1. GTA IV
2. Braid
3. LittleBigPlanet
4. Rock Band 2
5. Gears of War 2
6. Dead Space
7. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
8. Hunted Forever
9. FieldRunners
10. Spore

Full thing through the link.

By Mike Bowden