Will the future of Spore let you release those sorts of versions of it at some point?

Will Wright: I’m sure at some point down the road we’ll be expanding in all sorts of directions, and we’ll be watching what the players do with it.

Lucy Bradshaw: And not only that, but I mean, some of the areas that are of interest are just what we can do with these creators and, you know, how versatile they are and where we might be able to take those.

Will Wright: The tools.

Lucy Bradshaw: The tools themselves. The creature creator and vehicle creator, and being able to take a direction that’s even apart from what we’ve done.

Why make a Mac version of it? Is it a romantic decision or a business decision or somehow both?

Lucy Bradshaw: ... First of all, games that Will had made befor--SimCity--originated on the Mac, had a strong following on the Mac, and I think launching first on the Mac was part of the reason for its success, because journalists were on them… [With Spore,] there’s sort of this energy with [the Mac] audience.

Will Wright: We want to see what weird, unexpected things people will do with these tools. And I think the Mac group will be over-represented and the people that surprise us with the weird stuff they do with tools.

Lucy Bradshaw: We’re kind of excited to take it to that platform and see what happens with it.

Why use TransGaming and a Cider port versus a native Mac translation?

Lucy Bradshaw: … When you talk about just the economies in terms of the Mac gaming audience as opposed to the amount of time and effort it takes to port something going native, with as much work as we’ve got, we can move it to the Mac audience a lot faster by using this approach. While I think there may be some advantages to going native, I think this gets you probably the best of both worlds. You get that game on the Mac where as a lot of games don’t move over there. And you’re really tapping into… Spore at the same time. So often it’s like six to nine months later.

We’ve partnered with Aspyr [on other games]. They’re really great. They did native versions before… like Sims 2. It took them, almost--I think Sims 2 Mac launched about nine months after the original. And every single expansion pack, it’s like six months after the original.

Will Wright: And that’s actually pretty fast.

Lucy Bradshaw: I think there’s a lot of benefit to doing a simultaneous launch.

[Editors note: EA is publishing all versions of Spore. They are not partnering with Aspyr for Spore on OS X. We apologize for any confusion.]

Will we see Spore on iPods or the iPhone?

Will Wright: I’d love to.

Lucy Bradshaw: It’d be interesting, and I think there’s conversations, but it’s not something we could announce right now.

Will Wright: [Pulls an iPhone out of his jeans pocket] This is my favorite device. [Everyone laughs.]