Spore growing on handhelds

By Tor Thorsen, GameSpotPosted Feb 28, 2006 8:42 am PT

Job listing reveals Will Wright's eagerly awaited biosphere-civilization sim will come to unnamed portables.

With nearly 60 million copies sold across all platforms, there's no question that The Sims is one of the most popular franchises in gaming. Given its success, it only made sense for its publisher, Electronic Arts to bring the PC-centric series to every other device possible. Last fall, the company released The Sims 2 on all current-generation consoles and handhelds, including the Nintendo DS, the PlayStation Portable, and the Game Boy Advance.

Given that precedent, it should come as little surprise that EA is also planning to bring Spore, the next game from Sims creator Will Wright, to handhelds as well. That plan was confirmed by a recent job posting on GameDev.net for a "Handheld Designer: SPORE" position.

"Located in beautiful Emeryville, CA," read the ad, "the Spore team is looking for an experienced designer that will be responsible for designing, creating, and maintaining game systems and content for SPORE Handheld titles." The lucky recipient of the job will be asked to "drive vision and design for both internal and external design teams for launch of handheld titles for SPORE."

While the job listing laid out its requirements for candidates in extensive detail--anyone without "previous experience as a design lead" and less than five years of experience need not apply--it did not mention any specific platforms for a portable Spore. No version of the game has a concrete release date, but GameSpot's E3 2005 Impressions has more details on the PC edition.

47 Comments

  • Dude_Face35

    Posted Jun 3, 2006 6:03 pm PT

    YES SPORE! i was looking forward this game and this just made it better SWEET!

  • comthitnuong

    Posted May 30, 2006 3:59 pm PT

    awsome

  • jazzkid212

    Posted May 22, 2006 12:49 pm PT

    please god let it be on DS i dont have the money to upgrade my comp for it

  • rainmanstile

    Posted Mar 13, 2006 3:22 pm PT

    im betting this ia a cheesy way of advertising and bringing some attention to the game. on the other hand it could be that this hand held version will be a mickey mouse version sorta-like a demo but bigger and costs you money. if you watched to the end of the movie you saw that you had an entire galaxy of worlds that could all be zoomed into down to eye level. and you mean to tell me that is going to fit onto a hand held. whats next a cray 2 on a cell phone?

  • kevster812

    Posted Mar 10, 2006 12:09 pm PT

    im gonna get it for pc

  • IhateMario

    Posted Mar 7, 2006 11:56 am PT

    a great oportunity for someone

  • mistertemper818

    Posted Mar 6, 2006 5:07 pm PT

    wutts spore??????????????????????

  • tienchiha

    Posted Mar 6, 2006 1:07 am PT

    Im just wondering if the DS can handle procedural generation power-wise. It would be perfect for it. The touch screen, the 2nd screen, and the microphone fits this game to a tee. The only thing I am worried about is size of procedural generation. The PSP wouldnt be able to handle the controls with the analog nub and the load times.

  • Jiggafly117

    Posted Mar 4, 2006 6:09 pm PT

    GO ON VIDEO.GOOGLE.com and type spoer the ga,e

    its amazing

  • jin_ohi25

    Posted Mar 4, 2006 1:02 am PT

    WoW!!

  • jin_ohi25

    Posted Mar 4, 2006 1:01 am PT

    thats great

  • n2Deepeth

    Posted Mar 1, 2006 9:01 pm PT

    For some reason, Japanese people really like the DS, even more than the PS2. It's definitely a good console, and hopefully, it can reach the same popularity in the US. I'd really like to play a lot of new games with a touch screen and microphone.

  • wayofthesauce

    Posted Mar 1, 2006 4:18 pm PT

    To everyone who says the DS doesnt have the power needed to run such a game: Take a good long loook at MP:Hunters and tell me it can't pull off some good graphics if done right. Granted MP:Hunters is over a year in development but the end result is looking amazing.

    The PSP is also very capable but the problems with strategy and RTS games on it is the much shorter battery life and that a control pad/nub is a little less intuitive than a touch screen. Plus Nintendo WiFi is gaining strength so unless sony puts together something as organized they can expect to lose a lot of games to the DS just because of the massive WiFi base. That's yet another reason to make a Starcraft DS too

  • fabtep

    Posted Mar 1, 2006 2:51 pm PT

    The google video footage is a part of the GDC TV Session (see my post above). However posted that there cut out all of what Will said when he was not showing scenes from the game.

  • limpbizkit818

    Posted Mar 1, 2006 2:33 pm PT

    they have gameplay footage on google video. So amaing.

  • Sandman100

    Posted Mar 1, 2006 10:53 am PT

    Looks like a cool game.

  • chrisdojo

    Posted Mar 1, 2006 5:02 am PT

    why do they mention the sims in the article? oh well.

  • jakeboudville

    Posted Mar 1, 2006 12:00 am PT

    awesome

  • Reetesh

    Posted Feb 28, 2006 11:23 pm PT

    I think it will be a great thing on handheld But only thing is that .... can a handle have that uch POWER to process all those things that Spore is expected to do?

  • jamil2nice

    Posted Feb 28, 2006 9:11 pm PT

    it's probably the Microsoft Origami

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