Reports that Electronic Arts’ highly anticipated Spore has been further delayed are “misinformation,” the publisher told Next-Gen today. ImageIt’s one of the most anticipated games of today, and any word of further delay for Will Wright’s Spore is sure to make headlines.
But reports making rounds today are basically old news being made into “new” news, EA said.
“There seems to be some misinformation flying around,” explained a rep in a phone interview. “Nothing’s changed since our call on May 8, where [CEO] John Riccitello specifically said that we were moving Spore from fiscal ’08 to early fiscal ’09."
EA's fiscal 2009 runs from April 2008 through March 2009.
During that May earnings call, Riccitello stated, "…Spore is a title we have enormous confidence in. I've had the chance to review the title three times in the my short return to EA and it looks fantastic. I will also tell you that it's right up [to] the bubble in Q4 [of fiscal ‘08], if not sometime in early fiscal '09, so we don't feel comfortable in forecasting it."
There has yet to be a firm announced released date for Spore. An "early fiscal '09" release means that the game could theoretically launch in spring 2008.
The rep said that the rumor of the additional delay was exacerbated by a quote making the rounds in the games press lifted from the latest issue of Game Informer which says that the game is “delayed indefinitely.” Apparently, the information from the conference call was misconstrued, the rep determined.
“It’s the same information we said in May. Spore’s progressing and it looks great,” she added.
IGN has published a list of the software being covered at this year's Expo, widely publicized as being a complete reinvention of the E3 the gaming industry has come to know over the past decade. As the format of the show has long been expected to be quite different, it comes as no surprise that the software list is somewhat shorter than has been typical.
2. Will has expressed (see the earlier link) that he wants to be able to have cross platform communications available. By delaying for more platforms it ensures a LARGER total audience to have this cross platform function be worthwile (both from a game play view and from a cost to develop view)
3. EA is supposedly looking to revamp LINK (again due to increased competition from Steam) so a delay to use SPORE as a launch title for the NEW LINK might be at hand (this is more pure speculation than anything Will has said)
The cellphone/DS versions probably won't affect PC versions much, I'm not even convinced that a Wii version would affect sales much, but I could definitely see a 360/PS3 version reducing sales.
I still don't think that is the reason they delayed this, as this is either the 3rd or 4th time this game has been delayed, and all the other times were because of issues because Will decided to expand the scope of the game, either there are still some aspects of the existing game that they didn't have down or he decided to expand it again is far more likely than delaying for simaltaneous launches on multiple consoles since there is no reason why they would want to do that.
I was refering back to a comment by Pentharian who raised the idea.
Also, Will Wright is known to have said:
IGN: Can we confirm you plan to eventually bring Spore to other consoles?
Will Wright: Well, we're focusing solely on the PC version at the moment. But we're thinking of Spore as a franchise, definitely, that will be across all platforms. Cellphones, too.
So...perhaps (and with EA being involved this is not a stretch) they have decided it is monetarily beneficial to wait until they have more than PC/DS versions ready and launch across all platforms at once.
If they do I think it would mean much less sales for the PC no?
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