spore posts

Dave Perry has been hyping his streaming game service Gaikai for the past few months. We were supposed to see it in action at E3 last month but at the last minute Perry pulled out of showing the service to the press due to "patent filing" delays. Today, however, Perry decided to go public with a 10 minute + video showing off how the Gaikai service supposedly works.

You can see the video above with narration by Perry as he plays games like Spore, World of Warcraft and EVE Online with only a few seconds of load time via a Firefox browser. He even had a full version of Photoshop running near the end of the video, showing that the service can be used for more than just games. Perry claims that the video demo was being run via a streaming server 800 miles from his location and that the bandwidth for the demo was "mostly sub 1 megabit across all games" meaning that the requirements for playing these games will be fairly low. Perry took a couple of shots against rival streaming PC service OnLive (without mentioning them by name) saying, "We don't claim to have 5,000 pages of patents, we didn't take 7 years, and we do not claim to have invented 1 millisecond encryption and custom chips. As you can see, we don't need them, and so our costs will be much less. ;)"

There's still no word on when this service will launch but Perry states he will be talking more about the business model for Gaikai at game development conferences later this summer.

This patch updates Spore to v1.04. It addresses a number of gameplay issues and includes game enhancements. Additionally, there's a patch for the Spore Creature Creator, bringing it to v2.01. The Creature Creator demo can be downloaded here. Continue reading after the jump for a list of changes.

Download Spore v1.04 Patch (84 MB)
Download Spore Creature Creator v2.01 Patch (173 MB)
Download the Spore Creature Creator Demo (205 MB)
Check out all Spore downloads

While we are firmly in June, the NPD Group has gone ahead and set out their top 20 best selling PC games in the US for the month of May. As you can see there's a lot of familar games in the top 20. In fact not one of the games listed was released in May. That will likely change for June with The Sims 3 and possibly other titles.

Blizzard took seven out of the top 20 slots for the May list and three of the top five, including the number one slot for the MMO expansion World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.

1. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Blizzard
2. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe - Electronic Arts
3. World of Warcraft Battle Chest - Blizzard
4. World of Warcraft - Blizzard
5. Empire: Total War - Creative Assembly/Sega
6. Spore - Electronic Arts
7. Left 4 Dead - Valve
8. The Sims 2 Apartment Life - Electronic Arts
9. Fallout Trilogy - Interplay
10. StarCraft: Battle Chest - Blizzard
11. World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade - Blizzard
12. Demigod - Gas Powered Games/Stardock
13. Real Deal Slots Adventure - Phantom EFX
14. The SimCity Box - Electronic Arts
15. Fallout 3 - Bethesda Softworks
16. Diablo Battle Chest - Blizzard
17. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition - Bethesda Softworks
18. Warcraft III Battle Chest - Blizzard
19. Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II - Relic/THQ
20. Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor - Relic/THQ

The NPD Group's latest list of the top 10 best selling PC games in retail stores is, well, boring with little change from the previous week's list. The list below is for the week that ended on May 30. However we expect the next week to see The Sims 3 on top of the list in its debut week:

1. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe - Electronic Arts
2. World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Blizzard
3. Spore - Electronic Arts
4. World Of Warcraft Battle Chest - Blizzard
5. World Of Warcraft - Blizzard
6. Empire: Total War - Creative Assembly/Sega
7. Reel Deal Slots Adventure - Phantom EFX
8. Civilization IV: The Complete Edition - Firaxis/2K Games
9. The Sims 2 Apartment Life - Electronic Arts
10. Left 4 Dead - Valve

Perhaps because of this week's launch of The Sims 3, the people sim's previous entry, The Sims 2 Double Deluxe, managed to outpace World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King to sit on top of the NPD Group's latest list of the top 10 best selling retail PC games in the US.

There's little else that's different in this week's list (for the week ending May 23) other than a n ppearance for the casual game Reel Deal Slots Adventure! by Phantom EFX (which was released over a month ago).

1. The Sims 2: Double Deluxe - Electronic Arts
2. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Blizzard
3. World of Warcraft - Blizzard
4. World of WarCraft: Battle Chest - Blizzard
5. Spore - Electronic Arts
6. Empire: Total War - Creative Assembly/Sega
7. Fallout Trilogy - Interplay
8. Left 4 Dead - Valve
9. Reel Deal Slots Adventure! - Phantom EFX
10. The Sims 2: Apartment Life - Electronic Arts

If you ever wondered whatever happened to Microsoft's best selling Zoo Tycoon game series, wonder no more. THQ has announced a new publishing deal with that game series' developer Blue Fang to create an all-new zoo sim series called World of Zoo.

Due for release by the end of 2009, World of Zoo will let players take care of 90 different animals and create their own zoo park experience. In a nod to Spore. the game will also have an Animal Creator that will allow them to create their own unique creatures and place them in one of the 20 zoo exhibits.

It's good to be working at Blizzard. The massive PC game developer continues to rule as its various games sell, sell and sell more copies. The NPD Group's list of the top 20 best selling PC games for April 2009 (via info from US retail stores) shows that Blizzard-published titles took up a full third of the games on the list

Also of note are two strong debuts for Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor at number four and Demigod at number 6. And an ultra-cheap price point has put Illusion Softworks' 2004 released WWII shooter Hidden And Dangerous II at the number 20 slot.

1. World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Blizzard
2. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe - Electronic Arts
3. World Of Warcraft Battle Chest - Blizzard
4. Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor - Relic/THQ
5. Empire: Total War - Creative Assembly/Sega
6. Left 4 Dead - Valve
7. Demigod - Gas Powered Games/Stardock
8. Diablo Battle Chest - Blizzard
9. The Sims 2 Apartment Life - Electronic Arts
10. Spore - Electronic Arts
11. Warcraft III Battle Chest - Blizzard
12. StarCraft Battle Chest - Blizzard
13. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade - Blizzard
14. Warhammer 40, 000: Dawn of War II - Relic/THQ
15. World Of Warcraft - Blizzard
16. The SimCity Box - Electronic Arts
17. Bejeweled Twist - PopCap Games
18. Fallout 3 - Bethesda Softworks
19. The Sims 2 Pets - Electronic Arts
20. Hidden & Dangerous 2 - Illusion Softworks/2K Games

The NPD Group's top 10 best selling PC games list (for sales of games at US retail stores) has a new edition for the week ending May 2 and in a bit of a surprise a new bundle of three classic Fallout games from its original developer Interplay made the list at number 7.

The $20 retail bundle called Fallout Trilogy contains the RPG titles Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 along with the spin-off game Fallout Tactics. It just goes to show even games made over 10 years ago can find new audiences. The rest of the list contains repeats from the last two weeks with World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King continuing to top the list.

1. World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Blizzard
2. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe - Electronic Arts
3. Left 4 Dead - Valve
4. World Of Warcraft Battle Chest - Blizzard
5. Empire: Total War - Creative Assembly/Sega
6. World Of Warcraft - Blizzard
7. Fallout Trilogy - Interplay
8. Demigod - Gas Powered Games/Stardock
9. The Sims 2 Apartment Life - Electronic Arts
10. Spore - Electronic Arts

We've been covering the whole digital rights management debate for PC games almost since Big Download launched a year ago. This week Gamasutra takes on the issue with a feature article that shows that perhaps some big publisher are starting to relax their stances on putting DRM set-ups in their PC game releases.

The story looks back to September 2008 when Electronic Arts released Spore with a particularly restrictive online activation system that used SecuROM. It didn't stop the game from becoming the most pirated PC title in 2008 and many believe the DRM set-up was part of the reason. The Entertainment Software Association's VP Ric Hirsch still believes DRM is needed for PC games, saying, "There is little doubt that piracy would be far more widespread without game publishers' use of DRM."

Others believe completely the opposite such as 2D Boy's Ron Carmel who co-created the hit downloadable puzzle game World of Goo with no DRM at all. He states, "Publishers aren't stupid. They know that DRM doesn't work against piracy. What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets. If DRM permits only a few installs, that minimizes the number of times a game can be resold." Even though World of Goo is in fact heavily pirated, Carmel states, "People who pirate the game are people who wouldn't have bought it anyway." Perhaps that's why EA has decided to to away with Spore-style DRM set-ups for both The Sims 3 and Dragon Age: Origins. Ubisoft also released the PC version of Prince of Persia with no DRM at all.

Some . . . thing is wrong at EA Maxis.

Yep, the normally stoic and serious folks behind the Spore game franchise are planning to do some . . . thing with Robot Chicken. Yes, that Robot Chicken, the Adult Swim 15 minute TV series that pretty much pokes fun at pop culture with action figures.

But just what are they planning to do together? All we know at this point is that it's happening on May 19 (that's next Tuesday) and the web site has the address www.spore.com/wtf.

Oh dear. We think we need to call in sick that day. Because putting the Robot Chicken crew together with Spore's creature design tools . . . well, we need to lie down just thinking about it.