Kotaku Previews MySims Racing

AJ Glasser from Kotaku recently got her hands on MySims Racing, and for the most part seems to like the Mario-Kart ripoff.

Using the currency that you pick up from different tracks, you can change pretty much everything on your kart from the engine to the body. Different parts affect the handling, top speed and weight of the kart, while special parts obtained from completing challenges can give you bonuses to handling, speed or weight.

You can read the complete preview here

The Sims 3 Coming to the DS

In a recent interview wit Gamasutra, Robi Kauker talked about transitition PC sound effects to other consoles, and talked mainly about The Sims 3 and the DS.

I just finished a DS game where I had 512K for audio and I had to get music in that too. The same ambience system that I was doing in The Sims 3 title, the same concept of the ambience system, was done on the DS level.

And in The Sims 3 world, it might be a two-second, three-second, four-second bird call or bird song to build the ambience. In the DS, it's a tenth of a second and I have to create the birdcall through programmatic, data-driven stuff, not just preset samples. In the certain way, the DS titles are probably going to have more interesting ambience -- at least for the geeky.

This pretty much confirms that The Sims 3 will be on Nintendo's portable system, adding to our current consoles of the iPhone, and PC. No news yet on the long rumored PS3 version, but we will keep you up to date!

View the full interview here

EA Goes Nuts on Marketing

EA has officially gone nuts on TS3 marketing, with advertisements appearing all over the place, these images were uploaded to The Sims 3 Facebook account, and show how much EA has invested in TS3, in which i am amazed, sure its not covering Valve's L4D advertising, or Take Two's GTA4 advertising, but it is still very impressive. Check out all of the images below!

Poll Results: Excitement

So our last poll asked if you were excited for The Sims 3, and we got a fairly optimistic view of The Sims 3 with 5 voters looking forward to the game, and 1 somewhat looking forward to it. This week we ask you "Do you have a lot of CC for TS2?". The Poll will close sometime next week, and once you vote, why not join the forums?!

Will Wright Leaves Maxis

In a rather perplexing piece of news EA today announced that Will Wright has left the studio he founded with Jeff Braun back in 1989. Will Wright has had an internal group in Maxis known as the Stupid Fun Club, which will now become a studio for creating games, movies, TV Shows, and Toys according to the press release. Maxis will continue on the Spore franchise along with any new IPs, while the Sims Division will continue the Sims Franchise. EA will publish all of The Stupid Fun Club's games, just as if he still was at maxis. You can check out the official site here

There are a few articles which i will point you to, first is just an article from kotaku, the 2nd is an interview with IGN's Steve Butts.

Kotaku - Will Wright Leaves EA, Does Something Stupid [Kotaku]
IGN: Will Wright Leaving Maxis [IGN.com]

Wired Magazine Preview

Wired recently recently had a hands-on preview with The Sims 3, and they put up a preview about many different aspects of the game.

The Sims 3 also does away with some of the duller parts of virtual life management. Keeping your Sims in good spirits is key to making friends and staying employed, but earlier games forced players to do a lot of babysitting. The Sims are now a bit more autonomous, and dramatic status changes will trigger "moodlets" that alert a player when a Sim's needs have become dire.

Check out the preview here

Forums are Open!

The forums have launched, and you can now access them via "The Simmers News Network" are of the blog on the right Navigation bar, or at the bottom!

The Sims 3 Advertisements Popping Up

"Let there be Sims!" That is what new Advertisements for The Sims 3 have been saying as they pop on across billboards, and even buildings.

The Simmers News Community Forums Launching Soon

I know, i know, i probably shouldn't be launching another section of this site if i can't keep this site up to date, but i promise that over the coming weeks you will see a bunch of new features integrated into Simmers News!

IGN Reviews MySims Party

IGN posted its review for MySims Party today giving it a 6/10 or "Passable". This is the lowest MySims game rating thus far. Daemon Hatfield has this to say

What is here is enough to be a fun little mini-game collection (again, for kids). In our review for MySims Kingdom last year we wrote that Electronic Arts could be doing much more with this franchise. That is still the case.

In a Nutshell it is a decent Mini-game collection for kids, similar to Mario Party or Carnival Games.

Read the full review here [IGN.com]