14 DAY TRIAL // Spore was one of the most hyped up games of last year, with Electronic Arts betting big on the popularity of Will Wright's other creation, Sims, to get people interested in the new title from his Maxis studio.
But even though things went pretty well in terms of sales, the infamous SecuROM DRM software made a lot of PC users frustrated or even downright angry with the company. That is, when some voices called for a console release of the game, saying that the whole DRM thing could be avoided if Spore came to the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.
Such a thing didn't happen, and now the franchise is preparing to arrive on the Nintendo Wii, of all consoles, a fact that has generated quite a lot of talk on the Internet. Now, as Will Wright has departed from the Maxis studio and has begun his brand new company, he has talked a bit about his most recent creation, and how nothing innovative would've appeared on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
“You know, we either port the game to console 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.”
It seems that, once again, the innovation of the Wii has attracted the attention of developers who place quality before profit. Hopefully, the upcoming iterations of Spore will take the franchise to new heights and offer players who put up with the SecuROM software some memorable experiences.