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Spore to be PC Only, For Now 111

Posted by Zonk from the got-to-get-it-right dept.
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."
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Spore to be PC Only, For Now More

Spore to be PC Only, For Now

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  • How would Spore be adapted to the Gameboy? Obviously there is more to it than just porting the software.

    • Re:Gameboy? (Score:5, Funny)

      by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @04:34PM (#16084185) Homepage Journal
      Didn't you know, Spore was due to be initially played on the gameboy?

      Once you adapted beyond the single celled organism strong electromagnets in the cartridge would active drawing together a Beowulf cluster of gameboys.
      This multi cellular organism would then continue to grow evolving and adapting to the body parts of hundreds of children per organism.
      Once it reached a critical mass the rate of growth will slow (until measured in limbs trapped per hour) and will enter a cocoon state.
      Emerging from this fetid rotting mass will be a small group of supergeeks built from the blood sweat and tears of a thousand helpless gameboy addicts.
      They will go on to become EA programmers.
      Immortal, work hungry and with no need for sleep the title will at last be released on other platforms within a couple of work shifts.

      That was the plan anyway, damn ESRB.
      • GameBoy? Or Spore running on a computerized (PC) trapper-keeper! (South Park anyone?) Ha! The article has been reasoned into your interesting comment to create a valid loophole using popular (more or less) culture! I'll be quiet now...
      • Once you adapted beyond the single celled organism strong electromagnets in the cartridge would active drawing together a Beowulf cluster of gameboys. This multi cellular organism would then continue to grow evolving and adapting to the body parts of hundreds of children per organism.

        That's a feature in the sequel, Katamari Sporeacy.

        Cool links. [blogspot.com]
    • Rather than go off about the promised kilobytes sized avatars and fancy procedural generated content that I understand little about, I'm going to make a reasonable hypothesis based on past occurance...

      I figure it'll be a trimmed down, more goal oriented-less sandboxy version like The Sims 2 for Gameboy Advanced [gamespot.com] It'd be interesting to see if anything neat is done with the DS' touch screen, although I suspect it'll just be used as a mouse during the editing process.

    • How would Spore be adapted to the Gameboy? Obviously there is more to it than just porting the software.

      It evolves to survive with limited resources of the new environment. This will likely result in reduction of size and possibly intelligence too, as well as dropping some of the visual mating signals. The question remains, however, if these adaptations are sufficient to compete with the native species.

      It better evolve, since right now it sounds like an amalgam of Civilization, Master of Orion, SimCit

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by UbuntuDupe ( 970646 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @04:11PM (#16083941) Journal
    PC gaming is dying out. It's totally a niche market [slashdot.org] now.

  • Mac? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by carlivar ( 119811 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @04:12PM (#16083950)
    What about Mac OS X? Yeah, I know, boot into Windows. Bleah.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by am 2k ( 217885 )

      EA doesn't do any Mac ports, so the chances are pretty low :/

      • What are you talking about? EA doesn't do the ports themselves but all of the Sim games are available on the Mac. As with a lot of major games, Aspyr has done the ports. I consider Spore to be part of the Sim family, so it would actually be a break from history if Spore were not released on the Mac. We can expect it later than the PC version, but I do expect to see it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by am 2k ( 217885 )
          Well, none of the EA Sports titles are ported. Other not ported games are:
          • Command & Conquer (except Generals)
          • Battlefield 2164
          • Black & White 2
          • The Godfather
          • Battlefield 1&2
          • All Need for Speed
          • LOTR: The Battle for Middle-Earth 1&2

          This list is just the result of a quick skimming over the EA page, there are lots of others (I'm sorry of any of the above are actually ported, diving through those web pages is pretty complicated). There are a few exceptions to that, but only the most important

      • Mod parent down. EA may not port it's games to mac by itself, but Aspyr [aspyr.com] sure does. You'll notice Will Wright's previous big project at EA, The Sims 2, on the front page [aspyr.com]. It's even a universal binary, for those with intel processors.

        As soon as Spore hits the Mac, I'll get it.

    • Re:Mac? (Score:5, Funny)

      by grazzy ( 56382 ) <(ten.ews.ekauq) (ta) (yzzarg)> on Monday September 11, 2006 @05:04PM (#16084463) Homepage Journal
      It's ok. We'll forgive you if you switch now.

  • EA... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dance_Dance_Karnov ( 793804 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @04:14PM (#16083971) Homepage
    If it sells at all, this will be on every platform at some point. EA ports damn near every game to every platform.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by PrescriptionWarning ( 932687 )
      i don't think selling this game will be a problem, its got some good hype, doesn't require a monster PC gaming rig as far as I can tell, and seems to fit within that oh so sellable kinda-casual type game market that The Sims is already in. So long as the game is fun and will run on peoples' computers, its gonna do pretty well.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by n3tcat ( 664243 )
      What worries me is EA has this tendency to lock out certain content from all but one port, so each port has some sort of unique aspect. They try to build it up as if they added something just for this one port, but it seems more likely to me that limits were imposed on the other ports instead. Depends on if you want to see it in a good light or a bad one though. What it all comes down to for me though is why would I want to buy a game 3 different times just to see the whole game?
  • 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?

    • Re:So PC means no Mac? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by johnfink ( 810028 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @04:20PM (#16084042)
      Apple did it themselves. Perhaps not originally, but still.
      Hi, I'm a PC.
      And I'm a Mac.
    • Windows only. Are you kidding me, has EA EVER released a PC game for anything but windows?
    • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by brkello ( 642429 )
      It's fairly simple. If it is a game, don't assume it will be on the Mac.

    • "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 p

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Zixia ( 534893 )
      I hate it when people use PC as a title for Windows only Computers. PC stands for Personal Computer.

      'PC' used to mean 'Personal Computer' and nothing else, and included computers like the Amiga and what have you. It evolved (mutated, if you like) in to meaning a computer running Windows OS, if only because of the relative popularity of the platform.

      'The PC' has come to mean something specific out of a generic phrase. It happens all the time. We still have ways to identify other 'PCs', like the Mac, Linux
  • 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 lowe
    • Biggest market first? I really don't think PC gaming is the biggest market these days. Not by a long shot.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • "Easiest market to code for yes."
        What do you mean by this? How do you code for a market? What are you judging 'ease of coding' on? I am really fuzzy on your meaning here but obviously intrigued.
        • You code for the platform that the market is based around. The PC games market is based around the ... wait for it ... PC. Computers are historically simpler to code for, given the ease of access to the hardware, and long history of development on them. For most consoles, you will have to get a dev kit from the company in order to even start looking into it.

          From what I understand, however, the gap is closing. The 360 is supposedly getting much easier to target (its just a windows box anyway), although
          • Lose the snideness in any future replies.

            "Computers are historically simpler to code for, given the ease of access to the hardware, and long history of development on them."

            Says who? Ease of access to the hardware? Yeah, because you've got to write for any possible hardware configuration whereas a console is a closed system where the configuration and components are always the same.

            "For most consoles, you will have to get a dev kit from the company in order to even start looking into it."

            Oh yeah, you ca

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion

              • "Yes but 90% of those configurations are pretty much known. You can pretty much expect everyone to have x audio card using soundblaster of another companies drives, y video card using Nvidia or ATI drivers, and z prossesor. Are there usually bugs, yeah, but there are s few that often it comes to the buyer not the coder to account and adjust for them, with only the biggest getting patches."

                1 configuration vs. (and being really leniant here) 10 configurations. Which is easier to handle? Keep in mind, I neve

            • Lose the snideness in any future replies.
              In other words, you don't know what you're talking about.
              Pot, kettle.
              • My original post was not snide. I replied in turn. Any other great insight you want to add?

                • Sure, let me make it a little clearer for you.

                  You responded to a snide comment, telling the poster not to be snide in his/her future replies. You then proceeded to make a snide comment within the very same reply in which you condemned snideness. Generally, this is defined as being a 'hypocrite.' The tone of your original post has absolutely no bearing on whether or not your reply was snide.

                  Does this help? I mean, I know I'm not the greatest communicator ever, and the /. audience of Engineers, Developer

                  • What exactly is your point?

                    I never said I wasn't a hypocrite. I replied to you and told you that I was being snide for a reason so I didn't feel it was out of order.

                    And here you went and looked at some of my other posts for ammunition; great work! I really care about your thoughts and feelings. Please, keep them coming.

      • Remember this is NOT a normal title, this is a game by The Sims guy. And that title is an absolute blockbuster and for a very large part on the PC. Not the consoles. Ever heard of "expansion packs"? Go to your local game store and try to find some for the PC. Shouldn't be too hard, it is about 1 maybe 2 shelves full. Now try to do the same for the console versions.

        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

        • "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"

          With the online content being fairly necessary to get the most out of it it's even harder to pirate. Not impossible but probably beyond the technical ability/will of the casual gamer.

    • 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 con
    • So Spore will be released for the biggest market first
      Apparently you haven't read the news, PCs are a niche market, not the biggest.

  • Spore will Bomb (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MBraynard ( 653724 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @04:17PM (#16084001) Journal
    The game is way, way too unstructured in it's sand box design. This game is going to wind up being just like Black and White in that it has some incredible features but will fall flat for being just not fun or particularly competitive.

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by johnfink ( 810028 )
      Yeah, because all Will Wright's other 'sandbox' games have flopped. It's only his games that follow a hard script and storyline that do well.

    • Re:Spore will Bomb (Score:5, Funny)

      by Brunellus ( 875635 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @04:29PM (#16084143) Homepage

      Just like that other Will Wright bomb, SimCity [wikipedia.org].

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nuzak ( 959558 )
        Peter Molyneux had a bunch of big hits too. So did Richard Garriott. So did Warren Specter. So did Roberta Williams. Every superstar developer eventually writes their own swan song.

        I predict Spore will be fun but won't meet the stratospheric hype. Yeah, I know, bold prediction, huh?

    • Re:Spore will Bomb (Score:4, Informative)

      by Dr. Eggman ( 932300 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @04:31PM (#16084158)
      I disagree, up until the Space phase, the game is very goal oriented. At the pond your goal is to eat enough food to divide and not be eaten. WW compared it to "a version of pac-man," albeit with upgradable abilities.

      Creature phase centers around fullfilling your needs which include food, ect. until you are able to mate and then continuing to enhance your creature until you max out its brain capacity and move on to the civilization phase. I don't remember what he compared the creature phase to, but I would say it sounds a bit like the Sims (need fullfillment.)

      Civilization phase has two big parts, tribal and city. Your goal is to eventually conquer your planet and develop a ufo to move onto the space phase. Tribal was compared to populas and City was compared to a simplified Sim city, though little was given on how to accomplish your goals other than "both military and diplomatic player styles" will be able to conquer this phase.

      Finally, Space phase still has plenty of goals to work towards with upgrading your UFO and participating in a number of "mini-game" type senarios involving first contact, terraforming, ect. Really, it's not until space phase does it truely become a sandbox and you have the ability to revisit prior phases with all the ufo tech you've accomplished.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Jaysyn ( 203771 )
        Anyone else wonder if we'll get Kansasian(*) "educators" calling for a boycott of this game?

        Jaysyn

        (*) not sure what to call people from Kansas. I have a few ideas but none of them are polite.
      • 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 [wikipedia.org]: 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

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by K'Lyre ( 600056 )
          Have you just not read or seen anything about this game? At the later stages, you still are the same thing you started as, just better. All your decisions up to your current stage have made a difference. That's like wondering why RPGs don't just start at Level 20. Seriously, was that orc that you killed at Level 1 all that important in the grand scheme?
          • I've seen the video. It shows the game taking place in various epochs (single-cell,multi-cell, small animal, intelligent life, etc) where one epoch doesn't really seem to clearly impact the other. I don't care about my killing the first orc having an effect on later game. I'm talking about the class I choose, skills I choose to learn, and whatnot having a late game effect however smallish. In FF7, that cure materia I start with may still be equipped late game, and will have improved (vs choosing a light
        • Since the Space phase unlocks the prior phases (in ways that have not been fully explained) it is reasonable to think that at that point in the game any changes you wish to inact would be possible. Perhaps they have genetic engineering to change your character again. I saw a poster that advertised "space-time" manipulation, but it might just be their version of quick interstellar travel.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crossmr ( 957846 )
      Last I heard Simcity 5 was under way..all be it very early now. No idea who's working on it specifically.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mgblst ( 80109 )
        Really, Simcity 5? What more can they do? Telephone cables? Cable tv? Maybe they will combine Simcity and the sims, build a city for your sims.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by crossmr ( 957846 )
          Yeah google it you might find it. I remember reading an article around last november that sort of mentioned it, but it also said it was very early. I expect there will be a graphics upgrade, they'll fix some of the issues that irritated people, there will be minor integration to The Sims 2, much like SC4 had.
    • This is Will Wright. He doesn't do flops. Well except for the flops. But he sure as hell ain't Peter Molyneux who has a deserved reputation of coming up with lots of ideas but failing to deliver.

      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 w

      • Will Wright games flop because they are too out there or just not fun but they deliver what was promised.

        Doesn't mean it will be a success but I think it is very unfair of you to compare Spore to Black & White.

        In both cases, for what the game is, it just isn't fun. I'm not talking about failure to deliver features. You agree with me that Wright games flop because they are 'just not fun.' This game is just not fun because unlike Simcity, there are not the metrics or recognizable goals to it and its to

  • This contradicts postings on The Sims2 boards (Score:3, Informative)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @05:12PM (#16084529) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • I mean, by definition, a PC could be a Win/Lin machine, a Mac or an Xbox.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Octorian ( 14086 )
      These are the definitions of a "PC" that I'm willing to accept:
      - Personal Computer (anything intended for a normal end-user, so "workstations" are excluded)
      - General purpose computers whose architectures are derivatives of the IBM PC (this would include anything x86 /w BIOS... Intel-based Macs may or may not qualify, given that they are a bit architecturally different from normal PCs with their EFI firmware)

      It infuriates me to no end that "PC" is used when people don't want to say "MS Windows". They think

  • Well (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sv-Manowar ( 772313 ) on Monday September 11, 2006 @07:10PM (#16085353) Homepage Journal
    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).
  • 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 poin
    • A lot of the positive feeling I have for the game is about its vision, not its execution. I like shooting people in the face as much as the next guy, but I'm exited that gamers are getting exited for something a bit more ambitious.

      And if it's the Spore I'm dreaming about, it'll be like Civ I all over again...

  • 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.

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