Posts Tagged “australia”

The informational pages have gone up two days early on the website for The Daily Telegraph, detailing how you get your hands on the Creature Creator:

Q. Where can I obtain a Spore Creature Creator PC Game?
A. It’s FREE with a token from The Daily Telegraph on Saturday 2 August.

Q. My Spore Creature Creator disk was not in my paper when I purchased it. What do I do?
A. The FREE PC Game is not inserted into the paper itself. You need to cut the token from page 2 of the paper and present it to your newsagent to redeem your Spore Creature Creator disk.

There’s also an address you can send the token in to in order to get your disk, if the newsagent has run out or if you nick a copy out of someone’s garbage or something.

Today’s paper also has a short little pictorial guide to the creator which raises a concern – the pictures show the trial version of the creator, not the full version, as there are clearly parts that are greyed out. This is probably just an error. But, well, the paper costs a buck, and if it’s the trial version it’ll give you a great reason to be even more angry at EA!

… and one other little tidbit. The paper’s Spore FAQ includes September 4th as the release date for the full game. I guess we’re getting it before everyone else to make up for getting boned on the Creature Creator?

There’s a Creature Creator Manual to download from this page.
The FAQ is here.
A little blurb about the offer is here.

Note that while all this is coming from the Daily Telegraph site I would expect the other papers’ (Herald Sun and Courier-Mail) offer to be exactly the same in every way.

And it’s going to be free! Ha!

Anyone who plans on picking up the Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, or Courier-Mail on Saturday will be in for a pleasant surprise. Included with the newspaper is a free copy of the full-version Spore Creature Creator.

How in the heck they decided this was a good way to promote the game remains a mystery, but for Australian fans who have not already tiptoed around the regional lockouts this looks like your chance!

And it will apparently be your only chance as it is a one time offer.

Even if you already have the full version it may be worth picking yourself up a copy of one of the aforementioned papers as there may be a special deal on offer…

The disc also comes with what an EA spokesperson has called an “AU$15 off per-order at EB [Games stores]“, but refused to go into more detail.

Of course there’s no guarantee EB will have the cheapest price and you may be able to get it for less elsewhere, but if you usually buy from EB anyway…

But victory my fellow Australians! We’re finally going to see a release of the Creature Creator here, a mere month and a half after it was released everywhere else! Hooray!

[Source: CNet]

With many thanks to gumby in the comments for the tipoff, the New Zealand version of the EA Store now has the Creature Creator listed on their front page.

I checked to be sure and I can confirm that if you add it to your cart you can indeed set your country to Australia in the order form, so it ought to go through just fine if you’re an Aussie.

And if you’re a Kiwi, step away from the sheep and go order already. :-)

If you order via the NZ EA Store and it works fine, please let us know in the comments so we can recommend it to others!

Link: New Zealand EA Store.

(Note: You have to go via the front page as attempting to link directly to the product page brings up an unavailable message.)

Thanks again, gumby!

[Update]

Courtesy of Ragman in the comments, you can also purchase a copy of the Creature Creator for digital download via the American EB Games website.

You could also order the boxed copy to be sent to you from there, but it’s a hefty $30 you have to pay for shipping. Not recommended for a $10 game!

[Update]

EB Games have changed their Creature Creator page and you can no longer order it from them if you’re outside the US, Canada and Mexico.

oddlily in the comments also confirms that the New Zealand EA Store continues to accept Australia-based orders. If you haven’t ordered it yet, may want to get in soon. No telling when they’ll change their minds too!

Kudos and hurrah to those of you who heeded my advice and got the full version from them yesterday.

Bad news to those who did not – some time this morning Direct2Drive UK locked the Spore Creature Creator away from anyone outside the UK.

This means that gamers in Australia (among other locations) now have no official means via which to obtain the full version of the Creature Creator.

If there’s one thing that is sure to increase piracy of your game, making it completely unavailable via any other means in one region is certainly it.

The craziest thing here is that they are essentially throwing away free money. The full version requires a key to activate, so they would not even have to host the download themself, just the key sending mechanism. But even so, 300mb of bandwidth is not that costly and would have been factored into the US pricing. No reason to think it could not have been for Australia, too.

The only other cost involved (unique to Australia) is getting it classified by the OFLC, which may run as much as $2,000 but would likely be cheaper. Is EA really trying to tell us they don’t think they could sell 134 copies at $15 in Australia? Or 200 at $10?

Maybe they’re busily designing a rabbit in the Creature Creator for them to pull out of a hat and Aussies will get the Creator tomorrow. I’ll be sure to update you all if this happens.

Those lucky sods who have their hands on the Creature Creator already continue to churn out all kinds of kooky designs. At last count there were 1,208 individual creatures listed on the Sporepedia… No, 1,217! 1,218!

Yes, the number is steadily climbing upwards. Where before it may take a couple of hours to see the number increase you can now check every couple of minutes and expect to see some more creatures.

But on the less happy side of things today, I still can’t find any sign that the Creature Creator will be available in Australia.

It isn’t on the EA Store and it isn’t listed on any game retailer sites. For a game that is supposed to be released next Tuesday, that is extremely unusual.

I contacted EA Support in an attempt to get an answer as to whether Australians will receive the game but unfortunately they only deal with technical support, nothing like this. The fine gentleman at EA did give me detailed instructions on how to ask on their official forums. Unfortunately, they don’t have a Spore forum, so there isn’t anywhere to ask!

It’s possible that it will simply turn up on the store next week when we can actually play it for ourselves, but I’m sure I’m not the only Aussie who’d been hoping to preorder it to ensure it would be available to play upon release.

If anyone at EA happens to read this and can tell me what the situation is, please click here to get my email address and drop me a line or leave a note in the comments. If anyone else knows what is going on, feel free to do the same.

So this post doesn’t end on a somewhat sour note, here’s another selection of creatures from the Sporepedia!

“Quadraspike” by vonboy

“Cygranite” by EntropyGuardian

“Longcat” by Keatsta