Electronic Arts released the iPhone version of SimCity today, and ever a fan of urban simulation, I spent the $9.99 to give it a spin.

One important thing to note about this game is that it looks nothing like the screenshot below (left), which was widely circulated by EA in its early stages. The entire UI has been overhauled (see below, right) to its great benefit.

More comparable to SimCity 2000 than 3000, the SimCity iPhone game has all the features would-be urban planners expect in a solid version of SimCity. The usual assortment of zoning options, transportation methods, and civic buildings are at your disposal, along with famous buildings and other bonuses.

The music tracks have largely been ripped right from previous SimCity games. There's the typical scrolling news ticker, with clickable headlines for event updates. There are advisors--albeit strange, anime-styled ones--and ordinances and plenty of charts. You can speed up time, and generate landscapes, and trigger disasters to your wicked heart's content.

The end result is a very worthy version of SimCity, with only a few annoying compromises. ... Read more

Electronic Arts today announced that the SimCity Box, a bundle pack of five games from Maxis' popular urban planning franchise, will hit retail shelves this June.

The SimCity Box will contain SimCity Societies and its expansion SimCity Societies Destinations, SimCity 4, SimCity 4 Rush Hour, and The Sims Carnival SnapCity. The software bundle, which EA suggests is a $100 value, will retail for $39.99.

A new patch is now available for SimCity Societies. The 123mb update adds two more disasters, six new events, new buildings, and also takes care of some more bugs. Click through for a full list of changes ... Read more

Now available on FileShack is patch 3 for SimCity Societies, Tilted Mill Entertainment's city simulator released last November. An 68mb download, patch 3 includes performance enhancements, user interface improvements and a new disaster in the form of a UFO attack. ... Read more

The first city pack for SimCity Societies will arrive in May, according to publisher Electronic Arts.

Following a theme of travel and tourism, SimCity Societies Destinations will offer players another 100 new buildings to use in the urban planner. Check out a few screenshots of the additions, including a particularly un-aerodynamic plane, below.

Continuing the barrage of news from publisher Electronic Arts, the company's Sims division is readying several new Sim-branded titles, with plans to begin developing "the next generation game for The Sims" within the next three years.

Citing the success of EA Redwood Shores' MySims on Nintendo DS and Wii--over 3 million units shipped, $100 million in revenue--The Sims label president Nancy Smith today informed investors that two additional MySims titles would appear on Nintendo DS and Wii within the 2009 fiscal year, along with a PC version.

The first title, MySims Kingdom, will hit Nintendo DS and Wii between the beginning of October and the end of December, with the PC version of MySims arriving within that same timeframe. MySims Party, meanwhile, is expected to ship on Wii and DS some time between January and March 2009.

Other new Sim titles include SimCity Creator and the previously-mentioned SimAnimals. SimAnimals is slated to arrive by the end of March 2009. A specific release estimate for SimCity Creator was not provided, with Smith only noting it would arrive before March 2011.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed the announcements to EA's Casual Entertainment division and its president Kathy Vrabeck. Shacknews regrets the errors and apologizes for any confusion it may have caused.

According to a story on GameSpy, a new patch is in development for SimCity Societies which will add content and additional features to the Tilted Mill Entertainment developed city simulator.

Expanding on the strategic mode introduced in a previous patch, the upcoming update will introduce new interface elements to help control more complex cities. The UI update will also include a building filter, and improves emergency services management.

When it comes to new content, the game will receive a new "Alien Invasion" disaster. Aliens will invade your town with their UFOs -- said to be similar to the ones that appeared in SimCity 2000 -- and blow up random buildings.

Lastly, the patch will include additional performance enhancements. Expect to see the update next week.

The first SimCity Societies patch has been released, offering a number of fixes and improvements for this newly released city building game. It also includes two new buildings and terrain maps.... Read more

What kid would want a free laptop if it doesn't come with any games? The One Laptop per Child foundation now has a solution to this basic problem.

Electronic Arts today announced it is gifting Maxis' original SimCity to the project. The One Laptop per Child initiative is a non-profit organization with the goal of providing cheap, functional laptops to poor children in developing countries.

The hardware itself, the famous "$100 laptop," actually increased to a price of $200 recently. The foundation has received funding for laptop distribution in countries such as Uruguay, Peru, Mexico, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Haiti, Cambodia, and Libya.

"SimCity is entertainment that's unintentionally educational," said EA global branding VP Steve Seabolt. "Players learn to use limited resources to build and customize their cities. There are choices and consequences, but in the end, it's a creativity tool that’s only limited by the player's imagination."

Tilted Mill Entertainment's SimCity Societies has gone gold and will retail for the PC November 21, publisher EA announced today. The game is the first major PC installment in the SimCity series that series creator Maxis hasn't developed.

The game strips away some of the more technical aspects of the SimCity series like zoning and setting up public works in favor of socially oriented constructs. And new kinds of resources called "social energies" gauge a city's industry, wealth, obedience, knowledge, devotion, and creativity, allowing gamers to use these resources to enhance their society's features.

For more information, check out longtime SimCity fan and Shacknews editor Nick Breckon's surprisingly optimistic preview of the title.

This week's show is both early and a quickie, as scheduling concerns backed us into a bit of a Monday evening corner. Episode 9 starts out with Chris Remo, Chris Faylor, Nick Breckon, and Carlos Bergfeld, and by the end has been whittled down to Remo and Bergfeld. Game impressions on tap include Army of Two (PS3, X360), SimCity Societies (PC), and Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for Wii.

In the news category, we touch on the Wii Zapper and its bundled game Link's Crossbow Training, new Rock Band tracks (Pixies!), Eternity's Child moving from Xbox Live Arcade to Wii, Sin & Punishment hitting Virtual Console, and Ubisoft quietly retracting its free game offers.

Due to time constraints, we unfortunately didn't get to address reader questions this week, but we'll make it up to you! Keep sending them in to shackcast@shacknews.com.

Play or download the podcast now, browse the episodes through iTunes, RSS, or Digg, or check out the full breakdown. ... Read more

There's a SimCity Societies preview on GameShark, taking a hands-on look at the city builder sequel.

When the first screenshot of SimCity Societies leaked--a fairly bland picture of a ferris wheel--fans of the series were instantly up in arms. In the spirit of the closing day at E3, I gave the developers at Tilted Mill the benefit of the doubt during a demonstration, and things turned out better than I imagined. Give it a glance.

Societies makes a few significant changes to the established SimCity formula. Gone is the zoning and building evolution therein. A menu of hundreds of individual buildings takes its place. Each structure sits on a fairly large plot of land, which gives the game a slightly more intimate feel, though not in a simplistic SimTown way. The cityscape was large enough for a couple hundred buildings, and after zooming out to view the full countryside, it seemed more like a normal SimCity title than I had expected.

Also at 1UP is this SimCity Societies Q&A. EA's Rod Humble talks about contracting out development of the game to Tilted Mill, the lack of involvement by Will Wright and the concerns of SimCity fans among other things.

New details have been released on SimCity Societies, the controversial continuation of the SimCity franchise. With the series' reigns having been handed from long-time developer Maxis to fellow city builders Tilted Mill Entertainment (Caesar IV, Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile), Societies will feature a greater emphasis on social management than past SimCity titles, while still remaining an urban planner at heart.

To alleviate the fears of fans, who were more than apprehensive following announcement of the game's new direction, Electronic Arts has stated that the PC game will contain over 350 building types. However, in light of its plebeian focus, Societies will introduce a wholly new feature to the series. Each building can each be combined or connected to form new structures, which will produce or consume a resource dubbed "social energy." The social energy of a city will be determined by the manner in which players match... Read more

1UP has followed up their revealing of SimCity Societies with a preview of the game, which is in development at Tilted Mill Entertainment. There are some more screenshots here.

For the first time, a major SimCity game will be developed by a company other than the series' creator Maxis.

A Games for Windows cover story confirms that Electronic Arts has handed development duties on the upcoming SimCity Societies to Tilted Mill Entertainment. Established in 2002 by veterans of Impression Games--the developer of the Lord of the Realm and Caesar series--Tilted Mill has most recently worked on the continuation of another city management game with Caesar IV.

In a report on the new SimCity, 1UP provided a single screenshot of the PC game, showing a low-altitude perspective of a city block. Based on Tilted's experience, as well as the "social" title, the game is expected ... Read more

Shacknews has today learned from an EA representative that SimCity Societies is the working title for the fifth main game in the popular Maxis city management series. Details on the game are being held until the publishing of a story in the next issue of Games for Windows: The Official Magazine.

SimCity Societies will mark the return of the SimCity franchise following the 2003 release of SimCity 4: Rush Hour. It also appears to signal some type of change in gameplay or setting, based on its deviation from standard numerical titles. Recent entries in the series have experimented with showing a more personal level of urban life. SimCity 4 supported the importing of characters from Maxis' The Sims into the urban planner, allowing players to track their ... Read more

Electronic Arts has announced the first Sim City 4 expansion pack, Rush Hour. Guess what this one is about? No, not the adventures of Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker I'm afraid, try again. No release date is mentioned (update: I see fall now), here are 3 screenshots.

Although the official website and PR's we've gotten have been shooting for January 14th, a number of reports have come in that SimCity4 is indeed available on a few different shelves around the US right now. To be specific, we've gotten 3 different EB reports in central and west coast, and a couple guys on the east coast saying the pre-orders have come in for the special edition.

- Screenshots
- Videos @ Fileshack
- Official website

Sure could use a demo of this game! Cant say I've really been thrilled with the last couple of SimCity games, but you always gotta hold out hope?