spore-creature-keeper posts

By John Gaudiosi

Will Wright's been at it again. After selling over 3 million copies of Spore across PC, Nintendo DS and mobile phones, EA Maxis has a pair of new PC games heading to stores this year. First up for gamers is the Spore Galactic Adventures expansion pack, which ships this spring. This summer will see the release of the first stand-alone game, Spore Creature Keeper, which is aimed at the younger demographic.

Since launching last September, over 65 million pieces of user-generated content have been created on Spore.com, thanks in part to the 6 million free Creature Creator downloads gamers have made online. That makes for one massive Sporepedia. But that's just the beginning, according to Lucy Bradshaw, vice president in charge of production at EA Maxis.

"We built Spore to be a platform," said Bradshaw. "It has a lot of new tech and a lot of design direction we can have fun and really play with. Much like The Sims, where we were able to take the franchise onto new platforms and do expansions on the PC, we're doing something similar with Spore."