Spore on consoles

"We’re looking at all the platforms for Spore, because we’re thinking about Spore as a franchise, not as a PC game," Will Wright has said in a recent interview. "It will probably take very different forms depending on the platforms." He muses that while the Wii's remote could allow "creative opportunities for the editors," the game will have to be sharply altered if it appears on systems like the 360 or the DS. "We might even pull out parts of the game – so you might be playing part of the game on a handheld platform, you might be playing the entire game but maybe more avatar-based on a console."

As usual, the consoles have one major obstacle for porting Wright's games: no standard mouse. "The mouse is a very good random-access device for putting on the screen; a console controller really makes you want the game avatar-based, so you move one character – that’s why RTS games suck on consoles." He suggests that where sections of the game are left intact, it may be switched to an avatar-based scheme for easier control. "With Spore, about half the game is avatar-based already – the creature game and the space game – and it would be pretty easy for us to make the intermediate levels avatar-based," Wright said.

There is no official word on what platforms will be supported, though widespread ports of games like The Sims and SimCity suggest that we'll see versions anywhere it's profitable.

by MacNN Staff