While reaffirming Spore's September 7 release date, VP of Marketing at Maxis Patrick Buechner has told IGN that both trial (free) and retail (premium) versions of the creature editor are coming in June. The trial version will be available for download and in The SimCity Box, while the retail version should be available in stores around the same time Box launches.

"The free Creature Creator has about 25-percent of the creature making parts from Spore. The retail version will have 100-percent," said Buechner. Any creations you conjure can be shared online via the upcoming Sporepedia, and they will be compatible with Spore once it's released. No price was given for the retail version, and it wasn't mentioned whether any discount would be given to those who pay a premium to be teased about Will Wright's evolutionary time sink.

Ever since EA announced the early release of Spore's Creature Creator, we've been wondering how the company planned on distributing the pre-game title. Fingers were crossed for a free demo, but now it seems that EA would rather entice players into buying their SimCity Box, which will reportedly include the Creature Creator amongst its lineup of classic SimCity titles.

On the game's Amazon product page, the box art indicates the presence of the "Creature Creator Trial Version" as a bonus feature. This same bonus is stated in the product description. If Amazon is to be trusted, we still don't know whether the "trial version" indicates a limited demo of the soon-to-be-released creature editor, or whether the editor is considered to be a "trial version" of Spore.

We also don't know if this is EA's only intended method of distribution for the Creature Creator. We've contacted EA for further clarification, and will let you know once we have a few more facts.

[Via GamerTell]

And what such a prestigious achievement amounts to is, well, an awfully large amount of money. You see, the Develop 100 aims to rank "the world's most successful game studios" based on the revenues earned by their products at UK retail. Leaping to the top of the list for 2007 is Nintendo, its titles earning £129.83 million ($256 million) and boasting a significant lead over the £68.78 million ($136 million) belonging to number 2 producer, EA Canada.

Other notable studios in the top ten include Ubisoft Montreal with £52.17 million, Konami with £41.67 million and Maxis, which raked in £36.84 million. You'll also spot Infinity Ward with £39.6 million and Bungie with £31.45 million, both of which coasted in on a single game.

[Final "million" word count: 9. 10 if you count that "million." Oh, great, now it's 11.]

If there was any doubt that EA would continue to milk the lucrative cash cow that is Will Wright's Sims franchise, that doubt can now be officially expelled. EA has created an official page for the next title in the series -- titled, appropriately enough, The Sims 3.

The site features little else besides the above image, which teases more details coming on March 19. Our Holmesian deductive reasoning lets us assume that this title will be a return to form for the Sims series, as opposed to another entry in the adorable but divergent MySims line. With work on Spore wrapping up after eight years, it's also possible that Mr. Wright himself may take an active role in the game's development. Guess we'll all have more information come March 19 (finally, something to anxiously look forward to besides Brawl).

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Well, here's a story that we didn't expect we'd be writing today: The Sims Online is back. ... Yeah, we're as surprised as you are. Apparently, a team has been toiling deep within the bowels of EA to bring The Sims Online back to the former glory that all 17 of its fans remember. The game is now part of EA-Land, and has apparently been improved with Yahoo and Google integration as well as the ability to upload custom content that can be sold to other players.

You can play without a subscription fee, but you'll be able to spend money to buy Simoleans, and (at some point) cash those Simoleans out. (If you want to cash out more than you put in, you'll need to be a subscriber). What will having a real-world economy grafted on to it do to the game? Well, let's just say that if you've never paid a Sim "masseuse" to talk dirty to you in Simlish, you haven't lived.

"Who's Will Wright?"

"'Who's Will Wright?' You're out of my personal fan club. Have you ever played Sim City?"

"No."

[Awkward silence.]

-Two dudes at last night's Will Wright party

So, we've just arrived at the Will Wright party and we're literally awkwardly sitting in a corner. We're typing on our laptops while attractive people mill about and eat lots of food (mini-hot dogs and french fries) and drink. It's the same club as last night at the Sony event but this is clearly more of a video game industry crowd. (You can tell from the bigger crowds around the food table.)

We're hoping that Will Wright comes out sporting a cane, then pretends to fall, does a somersault, and then kills us off one by one with an elaborate series of candy-themed traps. We'll let you know.

You would think that after years working on the game, the developers of Spore would have seen all the game has to offer. But, to hear Maxis' Caryl Shaw tell it at her GDC lecture Wednesday, the real meat of the game has yet to be created. That's because the vast majority of the creatures and structures that will inhabit the Spore universe will come from the brains of its user base.

When users get their hands on the creation tools, they may be surprised at the depth of their control. Besides fully fledged gaming consoles serving as buildings, Shaw also showed off an owl shaped spaceship, a craft that bore an eerie resemblance to Katamari Damacy's prince and ... a sentient race of Cheetoes. Really.

Just how versatile is Spore's asset creation system? Check out these images we saw at today's GDC demonstration of the game's user-generated content features. No, your eyes aren't deceiving you, those are buildings shaped like a Wii, PS3 controller, GameCube and Xbox 360, created by one Maxis staffer.

Just FYI, that dude's head isn't user generated ... unless God plays Spore. Which he probably does.

Four Spore and just over seven years ago (hah! we're punny), Will Wright set about his extremely ambitious "Sim Everything" project. Now that we have a confirmed release date of September 7, 2008 (and some parts even sooner), it's time to recap all the Spore news from the last 14 hours:

• Spore finally evolves to retail Sept 7, 2008
• Can't wait for September 7? Creature-only Spore to launch sooner
• Will Wright talks Spore on Wii, delays, procedural music
• DS, mobile version of Spore titled 'Spore Creatures'
• A peak into Will Wright's office
• Today's most retrospective video: Spore's GDC 2005 unveiling

Hands-on impressions:

• Joystiq impressions: Spore (PC/Mac)
• Joystiq Impressions: Spore Creatures (Mobile)
• Joystiq impressions: Spore Creatures (DS)

Exhaustive galleries found after the break!

EA is releasing a separate SKU for a creature-editor edition of Spore even earlier than its September 7 game launch. The company confirmed with us that the stand-alone product will let players begin creating crazy creatures, although it won't include other components of Spore's Creature Phase. Those creatures will then be able to be used in the full version of Spore.

EA didn't give any more specific details about when the creature-editor-only Spore will be released and its cost. Here's hoping it's a free download available, umm, yesterday. There's time travel in Spore, right?

Even after watching and playing Spore to the point of delirium, I still had more questions. There was even more I didn't see. But I was so full that I figured if I never heard anything about Spore again, I'd be satisfied.

Somehow, in the following days, I started to miss Spore a little: the teetering walks of an off-balance creature, an alien spaceship scaring my nervous tribe, and the curved horizon lines. I could fill pages here with these little snippets -- and I did in my notebook.

But most of all, I came away thinking that Maxis could pull off Spore's overwhelming scope. This game could actually live up to Will Wright's intent, shipping on September 7. Through Spore, he could change gaming again.

I never wanted to read another hype-generating Spore preview again. I never thought I'd be writing one.

Like many other multi-platform games, Spore DS Spore Creatures is being developed outside of EA's Maxis office. Foundation 9 -- formerly the Amaze Entertainment studio -- is handling the game. (Maxis says it's doing the "design" internally, for what that's worth.) Spore's immense scope is being cut to fit the DS screen; instead of five different phases, the DS game is more of an adventure story centering on creature creation, exploration, and evolution.

After hearing this scope -- "You know... for kids." -- I almost wrote it off outright. After seeing the game, I think it's going to appeal heavily to that young demographic, but it's also going to snag a lot of The Sims fans.

Update: EA let us know that only the DS game will be called "Spore Creatures." The mobile version keeps the simple "Spore" handle.

Spore Creatures for mobile phones is launching with the rest of the Spores on September 7. I figured that this Spore had no chance of infecting me. But after recently playing, I was impressed and surprised by its quality. The graphics -- and even its concept -- would be at home on a DS or Game Boy.

Like Spore on the DS, the mobile version of the game doesn't even try include everything from the PC version. Spore for phones centers on the Cell Phase of the game. You use the phone's joystick to steer the creature through a slurry of suspended protein and other early life forms, eating objects and avoiding enemies.

But like the other versions of Spore, you'll regularly use a creature editor to upgrade the character. While the body part choices are also scaled down, there's enough variety to make the creature your own. Certain parts, like a dangling lure, affect how other organisms behave. That lure attracts food to you, for example. Or you could add a shell for personal defense; hit a button, and hide inside for temporary invulnerability.

While wandering through EA's Maxis office for a recent Spore demo or two (or three), we snapped a few pictures of building art and Will Wright's office. (We've grown unexpectedly fascinated with people's desks.) "It's not a bug, it's a feature" never gets old. And it's a veritable game of spot-the-technology-that-shouldn't-be-here inside Wright's workspace. Well, "shouldn't" for game developers who aren't trying to launch the SimEverything genre. Somehow, we think Wright needs everything in the photo.