With Spore set to take fire on PC’s & Macs this September 7th, and scaled back versions of the game also being released for Nintendo DS & mobile platforms there has been relatively little information regarding gameplay and online aspect of the game.

A grandiose simulation of every stage of life, from the primordial soup to space exploration is how Wired.com’s Chris Kohler described Spore in his extensive first look at the latest version of the game.

The following video interview features designer Will Wright & EA producer Caryl Shaw describing the massive online scope of this massively single player game. Huh? Watch the video and you will understand.

Loading.Ready.Run shares with us a brilliant glimpse of our future courtesy of Halo. While quite similar to the most excellent EPIC (which I also recommend viewing at your earliest convenience) I consider the following to be the best video game mockumentary I have ever seen. Enjoy.

During the WWDC 07 show in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced id software’s John Carmack to the audience, watch the video-on-demand (VOD) in QuickTime and MPEG-4 by visiting via Apple.

At the 10:13 mark, the video shows the first look at the engine in the works at id Software, the intriguing visuals are accompanied by the following:

“So the last couple of years at id we’ve been working in secrecy on next-gen tech and a game for it… this is the first time we’re showing anything we’ve done on it publicly.” id Tech 5™… “What we’ve got here is the entire world with unique textures, 20GB of textures covering this track. They can go in and look at the world and, say, change the color of the mountaintop, or carve their name into the rock. They can change as much as they want on surfaces with no impact on the game.”

The id Software website has more:

In a surprise demonstration during Steve Job’s keynote at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference today, John Carmack unveiled id’s latest revolution in game engine technology with the very first showing of id Tech 5™ running live on the Mac with OS X.

The ground breaking technology unveiled today will power id’s new internally developed game and will be available for licensing to third parties. The new id rendering technology practically eliminates the texture memory constraints typically placed on artists and designers and allows for the unique customization of the entire game world at the pixel level, delivering virtually unlimited visual fidelity. Combined with a powerful new suite of tools designed to specifically facilitate and accelerate this content creation process, id Tech 5™ will power games that contain vast outdoor landscapes that are completely unique to the horizon, yet have indoor environments with unprecedented artistic detail.

While shown for the very first time running in real time on a Mac, id Tech 5™ additionally supports the Xbox 360 and Playstation3 console platforms as well as the PC, and will be available for licensing to developers and publishers interested in working with a truly next generation rendering and game development solution. id Software will be showing id Tech 5™ to interested developers and publishers by appointment only at the E3 Media & Business Summit from July 11 – 13, 2007 in Santa Monica, Calif.

This new technology looks to be quite promising and will compete with Epic’s Unreal Engine 3, Valve’s Source game engine, and Crytek’s CryTECH 2 engine.
[press release]

It seems like only yesterday when I first wrote about Wii Transfer, and now it is a 2.0 app. My how times are changing. Wii Transfer 2.0 adds some very cool features to its ability to encode videos from your Mac for playing on the Wii. 2.0 offers:

• The ability to stream your music from your Mac to your Wii
• Share your photos from your Mac to your Wii
• Lots of bug fixes, and a new UI

Wii Transfer 2.0 is a free update for folks who have previous versions.
If you want to get in on the fun I suggest doing it before the end of
this month. Until the end of January Wii Transfer costs a paltry $9,
once January is over the price goes up to $14.
[via Scott McNulty@TUAW]

According to a leaked script, three of our favorite consumer electronics are going to do a little “transforming” in the new Transformers live action movie courtesy of Michael Bay.
The Xbox 360 game console, iPod music player, and plasma televisions are going shape-shift to become, well, we don’t know what yet. Maybe the Xbox 360 will turn into a PS3, the plasma into an LCD, and an iPod into Steve Jobs?
We’re undecided on this here at Giz HQ. Personally, I think this is wicked rad awesome, but some of the other guys think it’s the complete opposite of that. Whatever. You guys suck. I’m telling your mommies. [Jason Chen@gizmondo]

In 1995 Apple launched its first games console, the Bandai Pippin. It was based on a 66MHz PowerPC processor and ran a stripped-down version of Mac OS 7. The market for the device was not immediately obvious. The Mac was notorious for its lack of mainstream gaming titles, so basing a games console on OS 7 was a staggeringly perverse decision — some might say suicidal.

The 603e processor the Pippin used was woefully under-specced for decent gaming even back in ‘95. Set adrift in a world where almost every gamer had a Sony PlayStation, Sega Saturn or Nintendo 64 tucked under their television set, the inevitable happened and Pippin died a horrible, embarrassing death. Recently, the Pippin was included in PC World’s ‘25 Worst Tech Products of All Time’.

Apple’s track record with games has improved slightly since. Many major titles like World of Warcraft and Halo are available to buy for the Mac — although often the Mac version is one release behind the PC versions. Only the bestselling PC games make it to the Mac and there’s often a six- to 12-month wait while companies port a title. But this may be about to change.

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