Features// SPOnG's Review of 2008: July

“In the span of 18 days, Spore Creature Creator users were able to create more than 1,589,000 species.

“This took God seven days to accomplish.

“This means that Spore people are only 38% percent as efficient as God.”

15/07/2008
Will Wright Gets His Numbers Wrong - Angers God!?

July. E3! Well, an E3 of sorts. In the same way that a pensioner risen from the grave to munch on the flesh of the young is a person of sorts. There was also a veritable storm of speculation that Metal Gear Solid 4 was going to hit the Xbox 360. Can't keep a spurious rumour down...

Before any of that came along, some other stuff happened. On the hardware front, in the midst of all the bluster surrounding the much-rumoured Xbox 360 motion controller, SPOnG went and uncovered a brand-spanking new Wii controller.

Those weren't the only two companies apparently at it on the peripheral front, however. Phil Harrison (by then several months removed from Sony in favour of Infogrames) was getting credited with all sorts of new doodads.

All that staring at patents was starting to give SPOnG a headache, however, so SPOnG took advantage of the GameHorizon event up in Newcastle to chat with Epic's Mark Rein and the (then) head of Microsoft's game developer group, Chris Satchell.

But, lets face it, in July the games industry basically held its breath until E3 hit. Like the damp remains of a mauled squid being slapped against a wall. Maybe it shouldn't have bothered, but it did. While this year's pared-down conference wasn't what many had hoped, it did offer a few nuggets of news.

There was Motion Plus for the Wii! An add-on to the Wii Remote that makes it, y'know, better...