SPORE announced for Mac

At Macworld Expo today, Electronic Arts announced that Will Wright's (creator of The Sims franchise) latest game, SPORE , will be available for the Mac platform later this year. A sneak peek of the game, which allows players to create their own alien race and explore their own personal galaxy, will be on display at Macworld Expo throughout the entire week. “We couldn’t be happier to bring SPORE to the Mac at the same time as the PC version.”, said Will Wright. “Spore is a highly creative game and I look forward to seeing what the players come up with to fill the universe they design.”

SPORE is a new type of life simulation game that lets players create and evolve life, establish tribes, build entire civilizations and even sculpt worlds. The game gives players a variety of creation tools to customize almost every aspect of their universe, from the creatures that inhabit it to vehicles, buildings and even spaceships. And while it is a single player game, player's creations in SPORE are automatically shared between other players' creations, making exploration possibilities limitless.

The game is split up into five phases, each corresponding to a different stage in the evolutionary process: Cell, creature, tribe, civilization and space. Each phase will also present players with different challenges and goals. Players can start out from the cell phase, nurturing their species from its lowest stage to a fully evolved, sentient being, or they can start building tribes an civilizations on multiple planets from the start.

New Lost Odyssey screenshots

Lost Odyssey , the highly anticipated next-gen RPG from Hironobu Sakaguchi and Microsoft Game Studio is set to release early next month. In preparation for the game's release, Microsoft has release some fresh screenshots from the game. We have included a small mix of concept art and in-game sequences below.

Click images to enlarge

THQ to acquire Big Huge Games

THQ announced plans today to acquire Big Huge Games, a popular studio focused on the development of role-playing games. Founded in 2000 by four veteran game developers, Brian Reynolds, Jason Coleman, Dave Inscore and Tim Train, Big Huge Games have brought us such games as Rise of Nations , Civilization II and more. Jack Sorensen, executive vice president of THQ's worldwide studios was pleased with the announcement saying, “ The acquisition of Big Huge Games is a big win for THQ as we continue to expand both our internal development capabilities and our portfolio of owned intellectual properties. he talent at Big Huge Games has an outstanding history of developing top-selling quality games and we look forward to their creation of many exciting new owned franchises for THQ.” Big Huge Games is currently developing a new RPG title for THQ for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC.