News just came in that Will Wright, founder of Maxis and creator of games like Simcity and the Sims, is going to leave EA to focus more on his business called the stupid fun club.

Stupid Fun Club is an entertainment think tank developing new Intellectual Properties to be deployed across multiple fronts including video games, movies, television, the internet, and toys.

“The entertainment industry is moving rapidly into an era of revolutionary change,” said Will Wright. “Stupid Fun Club will explore new possibilities that are emerging from this sublime chaos and create new forms of entertainment on a variety of platforms.”

The SFC is owned by Will Wright and EA, both for 50%.

Read Will Wright’s post on the official Spore forums, or read the full press release here.

Rumours had been flying around sometime already about Wii and DS versions of SimCity. EA has now officially announced SimCity Creator:

Initial descriptions appear to indicate that the SimCity Creator will be an “all family” experience (completely in line with the Wii marketing strategy) which will probably mean it will not attract the hardcore City Gamers of SC4 days. However, there is one thing these people may enjoy knowing:

For the first time, take the liberty to build transportation systems with free placement of rounded and curved roads and rail lines, taking your city to new creative and curvy heights.

Read the complete press release and see the accompanying screenshots below the cut

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A Dutch guy called Nique made a modern version of a classic SimCity 2000 song. It sounds very good. Brings back a couple of memories from the SC2000 era. Use the youtube video below to listen to it, or download the mp3s!

A lot of thanks to Nique for providing the mp3’s!
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Our friends over at Spores Illustrated pointed out a video of an interview with Will Wright. The interview runs over 15 minutes, and covers The Sims, Spore, life, the universe and everything!

EA has just released the third patch for SimCity Societies. The update can be downloaded from the official SCS site, and features:

• a new disaster in the form of a UFO attack
• several fixes to the Strategic Gameplay modes that were introduced with the second patch
• fixes to several bugs
• everything that was in the first two patches

The complete update notes are described in a pdf that’s downloadable from the official site.

Even though a page on SCS Destinations appeared at the official SCS site a week ago already, it wasn’t until today that EA released a press statement on the upcoming Expansion Pack. Erm: make that City Pack.

Today Electronic Arts Inc. unveiled SimCity™ Societies Destinations, the first city pack in the popular SimCity Societies line-up of games.

As shown earlier at the official site, the focus of the City Pack is on tourism:

The city pack add-on moves the SimCity Societies experience into exciting, new – and sometimes exotic—locales, allowing players to create the perfect vacation spot.

In the words of  Rod Humble, Head of The Sims Studio

SimCity Societies Destinations is the perfect game to let your imagination go on vacation, while at the same time provides deeper, challenges for the player. Whether you want to forge a mini republic or build a spiritual retreat, you’ll have all the tools to make your destination admired by citizens far and wide.

The press release comes with a set of screenshots:

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About two weeks ago Simphoni reported on a possible expansion pack for Simcity Societies with the possible name Destinations. This rumour has now officially been confirmed by Tilted Mill at the official SCS site. According to the SimCity Societies Destinations product page the expansion pack will feature all kinds of new functionality. It doesn’t look like something along the lines of Rush Hour for SC4, but more like The Sims on Vacation. For screenshots, check out the official SCS site.

From unspoiled nature parks with campgrounds and hiking trails to tropical beach resorts with water sports and fine dining, from humble county fairs with hay rides and midway games, to sprawling modern theme parks with all the bells and whistles, you’ll build an entire city based on attracting visitors, and keeping them entertained and satisfied.

Create amazing destinations — Turn your romantic city into a tropical beach resort, your authoritarian city into a banana republic, or your meditative city into a spiritual getaway for the rich and famous. Create attractions that are high class or low brow or bizarre.

More than 100 new buildings with new abilities, from 5 star beach resorts to UFO crash sites.

More than 35 new special Sims with new behaviors – traveling business men, religious pilgrims, political devotees, cult members, adventures and more.

New tourism and tourist functionality – Make your city attractive, working to bring more visitors who bring in more cash to our city’s coffers.

Expanded transit functionality, including air and water travel.

The Australia based British comedian “Yahtzee” reviewed Simcity:Societies in his weekly column in the escapist. He uses some strong words, so if you are easily offended, be careful.

New reviews by Zero Punctuation appear every Wednesday on the Escapistmagazine.com

Due to people paying a lot of attention, a pre-ordering page was discovered for a SimCity Societies expansion pack that will apparently be titled “SimCity Societies Destinations”. According to that pre-ordering page the price will be GBP 19.99 and its release is scheduled for the 23rd of May 2008. No confirmation yet as to whether this is real, or what will be in the expansion pack yet.

Update: screenshot of the ordering page in question in case it mysteriously disappears:

1Up reports that a new SimCity Societies patch is being worked on by Tilted Mill and will be made available in the coming weeks. This will be the third patch for SimCity Societies. According to 1Up the new update will feature:

• A new disaster in the form of an Alien Attack
• An easier way to locate buildings that are on fire, and finding fire stations to start fighting the fire
• New ways to sort buildings in the building options menu
• Fixes for performance issues, especially on Vista machines