Spore, the most anticipated game of the year, is most likely to become as huge as The Sims was or even bigger. However, Electronic Arts and Maxis don't want their masterpiece to stay only in the game world, like The Sims did - they want to further expand the universe to other media, like television and cinema. So, most likely, two years from now, along with Spore Pets and IKEA Tribal Sticks, we'll be able to watch the soap opera Spore 90210: The Creature Creator and the hardcore movie Sporeminator.

All joking aside, the creator of the Spore video game, Will Wright, announced that EA planned to license television and movie rights for their title in order to boost sales. I don't really see the connection here, but they surely know better than me.

"With Spore, we're looking way outside the game space, such as TV, movies, etc. We're basically planting the seeds to spread Spore out to a much wider group of people than would ever play a computer game," Wright told Reuters in an interview in Singapore.

The Sims, the previous title from Maxis, sold about 100 million copies since its launch and there are huge possibilities for Spore to surpass these figures, since the marketing plan seems to be a bit smarter this time and piracy will be much lower thanks to the online component. All these combined with EA's plans to expand the already existing franchise to TV and theaters, could mean, in the end, that we'll be living in a true Spore era.

"We're going to be much more intelligent about harvesting other market opportunities for Spore than we were with The Sims, which as big as it was in the game space, pretty much remains in the game space," Wright concluded.