Spore won't come close to The Sims

Spore was making big news this fall for flirting with the 2 million mark as 2008 came to a close. Unfortunately, when compared to Will Wright's previous EA franchise, The Sims, Spore won't even come close. The Sims franchise sold over 100 million units!!! 100 MILLION UNITS!!! All the sequels and expansion packs dominated the PC charts for years and years. You just couldn't avoid The Sims.

But Spore won't come close. Not that hitting 100 million units is an easy feat, far from it, I just wonder what EA's sales expectations were for Spore. When I heard that Spore was Will Wright's next franchise, I knew that it would have a real struggle to emulate Wright's previous success.

The reason? Aliens. Spore is about aliens. And when you start talking about aliens and spaceships, you've just shut out most of the population. Gamers and sci-fi fans will eat Spore up, but that enormous population of non-gamers that The Sims appealed to won't give Spore a second glance.

The Sims was about human beings. They were on the cover, they were in the game, the entire concept was extremely easy to understand. Humans like humans. Humans relate to humans. Humans know humans. The concept, at its core, was appealing to practically everyone. On the other hand, Spore is about aliens. And, by definition, humans don't know aliens, so from its inception, Spore didn't have a chance to rival The Sims.

I saw a similar trend with Pixar's movies. It was easy to see that Cars, with *ahem* CARS as the main characters, wouldn't touch the success The Incredibles achieved, which featured an All-American family of superheroes. Again, humans relate to humans. With The Incredibles, Pixar really hit the nail on the head by appealing to *every* member of the family, so of course everyone wanted to see it! In the case of Cars however, that universal appeal was lacking, and it showed in the worldwide box office numbers: Cars pulled in $462M, The Incredibles raked in $635M. (source: www.the-numbers.com/features/cars.php)

What's the bottom line for game publishers? Having a mainstream title in your portfolio is a very good thing. Having sci-fi titles in your portfolio is a good thing too, but replacing a mainstream title with a more niche product can only lead to tears.