Monte Cristo announced the North America  released date for Cities XL.   Discuss in the forums at http://www.simphoni.net/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=16117&view=findpost&p=399440.

North American players, rejoice! Monte Cristo is glad to announce the release of Cities XL in North America on October, 9th. 

The product will be available on our secure website www.citiesxl.com through:

• mail order of the boxed version covering USA and Canada (Shipping will be free of charge!)
• digital download

The following digital download network will also support Cities XL: Steam, Direct2Drive, Trygames, Impulsedriven, Gametap

Check back on our website often for more info on special promotions and more partners!

The Cities XL Team. 

North American players, rejoice! Monte Cristo is glad to announce the release of Cities XL in North America on October, 9th. 

The product will be available on our secure website www.citiesxl.com through:

• mail order of the boxed version covering USA and Canada (Shipping will be free of charge!)
• digital download

The following digital download network will also support Cities XL: Steam, Direct2Drive, Trygames, Impulsedriven, Gametap

Check back on our website often for more info on special promotions and more partners!

The Cities XL Team.

At SIMphoni we just recieved word from MaxisCactus at Maxis if a new Spore API.  She says,

“Here at Maxis, we’re working on some features that will help you enrich your fansites by creating your own Spore applications. 

We’re collecting these features into a web-based Spore API. Using simple web services, you can access our huge database of creations and creators. We have samples and quick-reference sheets to get you started. If you have questions, feedback, or want to announce your awesome app, head over to the Spore forum.”

You can find everything you need to get started here:

http://www.sporeapi.com

This Saturday night in North America, while you are pacing the floor in anticipation of Spore’s release on Sunday knowing our European friends are already playing it, you can watch a two-hour-long documentary special on The Discovery Channel television network, entitled, “The Future Is Wild and the Making Of Spore“. It will play twice on Saturday, September 6: once at 8pm Eastern time, 7 Central, 6 Mountain, and 5 Pacific, then again four hours later at 12E, 11C, 10M, and 9P. These are the only two times the program is currently scheduled to be aired. An advance description of the two-hour special states,

“Documentary, Special, (2008) A look into the future of how the world evolves millions of years from now and how this special inspired the video game Spore.”

The Discovery Channel is the flagship of Discovery Communications, LLC, which provides primarily educational programming to 810 television subscribers in more than 170 countries. Its sister channels, The Learning Channel (TLC), Animal Planet, Discovery Health, Discovery Kids, The Science Channel, The Military Channel, The Travel Channel, BBC America, BBC World, and others, each provide 24/7 educational and historical documentaries.

SIMphoni does not yet have information about showings in other regions of the world, but those of you with Discovery Channel access should check your local television listings for broadcast times.

SIMphoni benefited from the Spore Community Day at Maxis in Emoryville, California in a big way!  On Friday August 22, Rexer joined a few other web sites in previewing Spore, the biggest game release of 2008.   That weekend, daily SIMphoni visitors spiked from around 220 to over 900!  Many of those visitors have stayed with us as daily visits following the spike settled at around 320 through the end of the month.

We are hopeful that we will keep these new visitors. Less than one week from now, Spore will be released on the worldwide markets.  We expect another enormous spike beginning the weekend of September 5-7, and hopefully continuing for several weeks as new players acquire Spore and look on-line for information, news and discussion about the new game.

This video was recorded by Rex Stanfield (Rexer) of Simphoni at Maxis Studios in Emeryvile, California on Friday, August 22, 2008. As part of Spore Community Day, representatives of around a dozen fan sites were given the hands-on oppurtunity to play Spore. Afterward, a panel of key Maxis developers offered a question and answer session. The panel consisted of:

• Caryl (MaxisLucky) Shaw, Producer
• Lucy Bradshaw, Executive Producer
• Thomas Vu, Producer
• Tom Bui, Engineer
• Bob King, Art Director
• Chris Seifert, Audio Engineer

The camera had enough battery power to record only around the first one-half of the Q&A. Rex really needs to bring more camera batteries along next time! But, some interesting new information about Spore is shown here.

The questioners included:

• Artistvrd from Hooked On Spore (Spore Profile)
• Cyven from MySporePage (Spore Profile)
• Geekorama from SporeTube (Spore Profile)

 

 

• Hydromancer from Sagan 4 and Sporewiki (Spore Profile)
• Jud Hudson from SporePrograms (Spore Profile)
• LadyM from Gaming Steve and Sagan4 (Spore Profile)
• Petreak from Sporesite (Spore Profile)
• Rexer from Simphoni (Spore Profile)
• Rybolton fromSporeum and formerly from Simtropolis (Spore Profile)
• xDreamache from xSpore.com (Spore Profile)  

Rex also captured an audio recording of the entire Q&A, and the questions and answers revealing new information about Spore were played and discussed as part of The Simphoni Podcast Special Spore Community Day Episode.

More information and discussion about the Community Day and Spore can be found at the Simphoni Forums.

This video was recorded by Rex Stanfield (Rexer) of Simphoni at Maxis Studios in Emeryvile, California on Friday, August 22, 2008. Caryl (MaxisLucky) Shaw demonstrates Spore two weeks before its release to a group of fan site representatives as part of Spore Community Day. The video recorded only around the first two-thirds of the demo before the camera’s battery gave up the ghost. But, some interesting new information about Spore is shown here.

Rex also captured an audio recording of the entire demo, and the questions and answers revealing new information about Spore were played and discussed as part of The Simphoni Podcast Special Spore Community Day Episode.

More information and discussion about the Community Day and Spore can be found at the Simphoni Forums.

You may have noticed over the past few days that Simphoni has added links to certain items of interest at Amazon.com.  We have partnered with Amazon in several countries, and with bol.com in The Netherlands. By clicking on an item you are taken to the Amazon.com site for that item. When you purchase the item, a portion of the sale comes to Simphoni as a referral commission on that item and any other items in the order! Revenues from these sales are used to defer the costs of running this site, and to finance additional site growth. At present there are five pages at which items can be purchased to help support SIMphoni: US, Canada, France, the UK and The Netherlands. Future plans involve adding pages for Germany, Japan, and China.

The Main Simphoni Shoppe Page contains featured items for each country and links to each international page. The featured items will be regularly updated with the latest items of interest. For example, there you can find new and upcoming items like The Tales of Beedle the Bard, the latest upcoming book by J. K. Rowling, based on the Harry Potter series, and Madden NFL 09. There is also a DVD featuring Will Wright and Brian Eno, Playing With Time, where the pair talks about creating video games. (I am ordering this one for myself!) And, of course, be sure to buy or pre-order Spore right here at The Simphoni Shoppe. In each international page, you can search the Amazon in that country without even leaving Simphoni’s pages, and create custom links for anything that can be purchased through Amazon!

Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) and its subsidiary Maxis Studios have announced on Thursday that their upcoming game Spore has gone gold. Maxis is the creator of some of the most popular titles in computer gaming’s history, including the SimCity and The Sims franchises. Spore is scheduled to be released the first weekend of September just three weeks from now, beginning with a Friday, September 5th release in Europe, and following up with a release in North America on Sunday the 7th. It is the most anticipated new game release of 2008 by most accounts.

We at SIMphoni are excited about the Spore and hope it meets our high expectations. We will be participating in the Spore Community day on Friday, August 22nd along with other fine Spore-related sites. There we will have the privilege to preview Spore and bring back our impressions and images. Also, we will be offering links for those wishing to pre-order Spore and the Prima Strategy Guide, while also supporting SIMphoni at the same time.

For the complete press release from EA and Maxis, see the official web site. Copies of the release can also be found at all of the standard business and investing news sites, including Yahoo! News and The Wall Street Journal (Subscription required).  Further discussion can also be found in the SIMmphoni Forums at the link immediately below this article.

The forums are undergoing an upgrade to the newest version of Invision Power Boards at this time.  Do not be alarmed if you see the forums disabled.  Sdrawkcab is bringing us the upgrade and some new enhancements to the forums. 

Rexer

Spore is scheduled to be released the first weekend in September 2008. It promises to be an historic event in the simulation gaming community. Two weeks in advance of that release, the developer Maxis is holding a North American Spore Community Day. This special event will give site owners and staff in North America a sneak-peek opprotunity to see and play Spore, meet and talk with the developers and programmers, see the Maxis headquarters, and find out what a day in the life is like at Maxis.

The event will take place at Maxis’ headquarters in Emoryville, California on Friday, August 22, 2008. Rexer will be attending to represent Simphoni. We know of at least a few other sites who have been invited, including Spores Illustrated and GamingSteve.com.  Rexer will be taking suggestions for questions in the Simphoni Forums.  Please join us in the forums to suggest items and topics for Rexer to observe and report on while he’s there!