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Spore growing on handhelds

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

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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.

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