Big Download Blog

Time from announcement to release: 3 1/2 years

History: Will Wright may have created The Sims and SimCity but in March 2005, during what was supposed to be a routine panel at the Game Developers Conference, he surprised the audience with Spore. The highly ambitious design was show in semi-playable form at GDC as Wright described his vision of the player using very intuitive tools to create and evolve a creature from a single cell to a space-faring civilization.

Reasons for delay: Spore was unlike any game announced before and the many press demos at E3 and other events over the next couple of years impressed the usually cynical gamer press. However, making the tools work with the gameplay seemed to take longer than first thought. A planned release in fall 2007 was then moved to a September 2008 release.

Final result: There's no question that the development tools for Spore are a true technological achievement but the game that came with it was slammed by critics as being too simplistic. Still Spore seems to have found and audience; it hasn't left the top 10 best selling games list since its release in September 2008. 11/03/09