Filed under: Gaming
EA promises Spore for Mac later this year
The eagerly awaited game Spore from Will Wright (of Simcity and Sims fame) is coming to the Mac later this year. CNET broke the news earlier in the day, and EA confirmed it in a press release later. Like the releases promised (but not delivered) last year, the Mac version of Spore will rely on TransGaming's Cider technology and is set to be released simultaneously with the PC version. Nonetheless, they're hoping to do better this time and even Wright himself expressed confidence, saying: "We couldn't be happier to bring Spore to the Mac at the same time as the PC version. Spore is a highly creative game and I look forward to seeing what the players come up with to fill the universe they design."Here's hoping that Wright's right, because Spore has been looking like the hotness itself for quite some time now.
Thanks David!

![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)


Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jonathan said 12:10PM on 1-16-2008
Nice, this game looks very promising, and certainly has a lot of people I know very excited, some of which are Mac users. I fear however that my humble Macbook will be left out anyway, even with a Mac version (I don't know how much this game takes, but integrated intel graphicas are not the best solution for games)
Reply
Nick Brumback said 12:19PM on 1-16-2008
Last I heard, Spore was going to use a new 3D rendering method where it used crazy algorithms to procedurally generate all the content you see using your CPU. Hopefully that plan is still in effect, since it puts most of the work on number crunching rather than your GPU. I would KILL to have Spore work on my MacBook. Plus, it's Robin Williams endorsed, and you can't go wrong with that!
Reply
Scott said 12:20PM on 1-16-2008
I am in the same situation, although I have a PC I built for gaming I'd like to see this game run on my MacBook, but I fear the graphics requirements will be too much.
However, my MacBook does run World of Warcraft without too much trouble. I guess we'll see.
Reply
Skwidspawn said 12:35PM on 1-16-2008
I was very excited about this game coming to mac, but now I'm a little worried. Cider technology is just not great. The EA games that have been released so far are very unstable, text often appears garbled, and they require a ton of processor overhead. I understand that it's easier to use Cider, but dang, for a game this big couldn't they have hired a couple guys to make it Mac native?!
Reply
Billy K said 12:52PM on 1-16-2008
You took the words out of my mouth. I'm not a big gamer, so when EA announced they would be using Cider to port Mac games, I shrugged.
Well, After playing Battlefield 2142 for about a month, I'm convinced Cider is garbage.
Sietepestes said 7:41PM on 1-16-2008
and yet another game that wont run in ppc g5... this really sucks...
Reply
Will A. said 2:16PM on 1-16-2008
Cider is OK, but EA is pathetically lazy about utilizing it. I hear you, #5, on BF2142, though; I think EA's "porting guys" were drunk when they shoved that one out the door.
Anyway, that's Spore accounted for - now if Fallout 3 is on the Mac, I can kiss my chances of graduating on time goodbye!
Reply
ZeroCorpse said 2:48PM on 1-16-2008
My only worry is that they charge a higher price for the Mac version, or that the price doesn't drop at the same rate as the PC version.
Honestly, I just prefer Boot Camp. At least then I know it will work, even if Windows XP is stupid and can't see all 4GB of RAM on my MacBook.
Reply
moo083 said 2:56PM on 1-16-2008
Unless, of course, its all packaged on the same disc. Then you won't have to worry about that at all.
Steve said 4:22PM on 1-16-2008
How do you get 4gb of ram on a macbook?
Greg G said 4:34PM on 1-16-2008
You can get the new ones with 4gb, or go to other world computing to get 2 2gb sticks. Won't work so great though, it doesn't speed things up in the older MacBooks as much.
Greg G said 4:02PM on 1-16-2008
Oh, right, just like all the other "great" cider ports, which are for "Macs". Intel chipset not supported, buggy on all other systems. Oh boy.
Sorry if I don't get to excited over this.
EA can take their terrible ports and shove them up their....
Reply