Spore goes gold

Electronic Arts has just announced that the code for Spore has just been finalised and is now being put through the gold stage of development - which isn't nearly as interesting as it sounds unfortunately. Basically the game is now essentially finished and the game is being packaged and burned to discs ready for distribution.

Spore is the latest simulation game from Will Wright and his team at EA Maxis, the same group that designed and made the The Sims games, as well as SimCity and many of the other variants.

The game has had a turbulent history and has long been thought to be nothing more than vapourware, but the nay-sayers have now been proven to be wrong. The game will be launching in Europe on the 5th of September, with a US release following two days afterwards.

Amazingly, as an effort to show exactly why and how the game has taken so long to develop, EA is currently hosting six different early versions of the game which fans can download to experiment with. These early versions of the code showcase different stages of Spore's development and can be experimented with freely - check them out here.

Staggered release dates like this are often said to promote piracy, but EA has oddly taken to using staggered releases on several future PC titles including Crysis: Warhead which also will be launching a few days early in Europe.

If you're interested in learning more about Spore then you can check out our extensive hands-on preview.

What do you reckon to the staggered release of Spore? Have you had a look at the beta builds on offer? Let us know in the forums.