Hasta La Gadget!

The SimCity series was first launched in 1989 and was created by game designer Will Wright. However, the man who built the series wasn’t a part of the latest SimCity launch that took place earlier this year. Instead, he sat back and watched the show, but it obviously was a bit painful to watch, and Wright wan’t too thrilled about how things went.

However, when speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Wright says that he “feels bad for the team,” but predicted that there would most likely be some backlash based around DRM issues and complaints. Wright says that the launch fiasco was “basically inexcusable,” and paying $60 for game that you can’t play it will obviously cause a lot of outrage, and Wright certainly understands that.

Then again, Wright says that the new game is “good,” and he enjoys “playing it a lot,” but the launch was pretty much a disaster for Electronic Arts. Even if the game publisher finally fixed all the issues with the game, the memory is still there of the time that you couldn’t access the game that you paid big money for.

In a slightly-related note, Electronic Arts will be sending out an update for SimCity sometime this week that will address a handful of issues. The update tweaks traffic routing, phantom air pollution, stuck school buses, and stuck university students crossing roads. Other updates include a slew of new items, as well as some audio fixes.

[via GamesIndustry.biz]

SimCity creator calls latest launch woes “inexcusable” is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Earlier today we reported that The Sims 4 announcement was imminent, a domain registration strongly suggested it. That was indeed the case. Electronic Arts has now officially announced The Sims 4 for PC and Mac. The game will be releasing in 2014 and will be developed by Maxis. EA hasn’t revealed many details at this point in time, but have promised that they will be released in the near future.

Maxis said in a conference call with VIPs that The Sims 4 will head back to the very roots of the hugely popular Sims franchise. They also said that Sims behavior and the complexity of Sim-to-Sim interactions were being focused upon. Maxis says it was important that they unlock new ways for Sims to interact with each other. There’s an offline element of The Sims 4 as well, unlike SimCity which received a lot of criticism for its always-on DRM.  It has been confirmed that players will not need a persistent internet connection to play this new title. It was hinted that a fan event might be conducted towards the end of August for The Sims 4, though nothing has been confirmed as yet. No concrete release date for this new title has been provided.

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It has been announced that SimCity’s first major update will be released on the 22nd of April. The update brings a plethora of fixes as well as little tweaks that will make the user experience better. Electronic Arts says that “The wait will be worth it,” adding that after the update cities should process more properly and many of SimCity’s game processes, such as education, disasters, tourism etc will receive bug fixes. This update also brings the important fix for HUD in colorblind mode.

This update will require service downtime for a couple of hours, downtime begins from 4PM E.T. The company says that this particular time was chosen after reviewing peak playing hours. Despite receiving much criticism, SimCity has already sold over 1.3 million copies for PC since March, when it was initially launched. SimCity has been criticized a lot for its always-on DRM as well as it being plagued with issues immediately after its release. The entire list of changes that this new update brings is quite long, it can be viewed by clicking through the source link given below.

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After the whole fiasco with the release of SimCity earlier this year, it seems that things have finally settled, and players are now able to build their cities in peace. However, there’s going to be another server shutdown come Monday, but only to make room for the game’s first major update, which is set to hit April 22.

Electronic Arts has announced that the update will hit on Monday starting at 1 pm PT and will bring the game to version 2.0. It contains “a number of top-requested bug fixes and improvements,” but the publisher was kind enough to provide a massive list of everything that will be provided in the update.

Some of the more important updates address issues with tourists, delays in receiving invitations, and phantom audio problems. It will also provide color-corrects when in a colorblind mode in the HUD, and data maps will show the filtered color when a color filter is enabled, unless you’re in a colorblind mode.

Other than that, casinos will be more profitable, and there will be a slew of fixes to the game’s budget-based systems, including fire, garbage, and sewage. Public transit will also see a number of improvements, including a fix for that annoying infinite loop problem that some players have been experiencing.

SimCity getting first major update on April 22 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Those of you were currently attempting to build a social media empire in Pet Society, The Sims Social and SimCity Social on Facebook can just stop playing those games right about now as EA has announced it will be pulling the plug for those titles on June 14. EA claims the reason for the closing of these three titles is due to each game failing to maintain a significant audience.

EA issued a statement to its fans in reference to the upcoming closure of Pet Society, The Sims Social and SimCity Social:

Today we are informing players of the difficult decision to retire some of our Facebook games: The Sims Social, SimCity Social and Pet Society.

After millions of people initially logged in to play these games, the number of players and amount of activity has fallen off. For people who have seen other recent shutdowns of social games, perhaps this is not surprising.

EA will continue to deliver popular titles for Facebook, most notably games from PopCap, including Bejeweled Blitz, Solitaire Blitz and the recently announced Plants vs. Zombies Adventures.

It’s interesting to see games published onto Facebook by EA haven’t been performing as well as PopCap published games. This just goes to show the EA-acquired company seems to know more about its social media audience better than EA does.

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