14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has posted an announcement on the front page of its online store, encouraging Mac owners to secure a copy of The Sims 3 for themselves ahead of the game's official release. Both the Mac and the PC versions of EA's highly anticipated life-sim will be available on June 2, for $39.95.
“The freedom of The Sims 3 will inspire you with endless creative possibilities, allowing you to create more than a million unique Sims,” the description on Apple's website reads. “With all-new quick challenges and rewarding game play, The Sims 3 gives you the freedom to decide nearly every detail of your Sims' lives and destinies.”
New to the popular simulation title is the ability to choose up to five traits to create individual personalities. Fresh design tools let players customize the appearance of their Sims, while they can manipulate aspects like their Sims' shape and size, facial features, skin tone, hair color and style, eye shape and color, clothing and accessories.
The new “seamless” neighborhood environment lets Sims roam to neighbors’ homes and explore their surroundings, take walks, or simply hang out. Now, players will be able to customize the Sims’ environment more extensively, changing colors and patterns of decor, floor coverings, wall coverings, shirts, furniture, and more.
When it's released, the Mac version of The Sims 3 will require an Intel processor, Mac OS X Leopard, 2 GB of RAM, and one of the following graphics cards: ATI X1600 or NVIDIA 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100. Mac owners will also need at least 6.1 GB of free hard drive space, with at least 1 GB of additional space for custom content and saved games. Unfortunately for those still stuck on PowerPC machines, PPC is not supported, and neither are Macs using the GMA 950 class of integrated video cards.
Readers can visit Apple's online store here, to order their own copy of The Sims 3 for Mac as soon as today.