EA Maxis is planning on releasing 4 Spore related titles this year. Spore: Galactic Adventure, an expansion to Spore's space stage. Spore: Creature Keeper, a tamagotchi-esqu PC standalone product aimed at younger gamers. Spore: Hero, an adventure style game for the Wii. And Spore: Hero Arena for the Nintendo DS. No official release dates beyond "this year" have been given for any of the four titles. Though it is expected that the two PC titles will be released before the two Nintendo titles.
Source: CVG [ more info ]

There's not much more I feel I need to add to this topic. I think the comic, though wordless, says everything that needs to be said about it. Completely expectedly, EA is milking one of it's biggest selling properties. And hey, that's fine. Everybody else does it too. I won't judge it to be right or wrong, there's no point. People will either buy the games or they won't. My opinion of the situation matters not at all.

And as a side note, if someone had told me in 2000 that I'd be drawing cow teets in my comic, I might have looked at them funny before asking "is it going to be a comic about an EA or an Activision title?"

Hah! This isn't anything new...especially in regards to EA/Maxis/Will Wright. Seriously...how many friggin Sims/Sims 2 expansions do we really need?

Those guys give SOE/Everquest a run for their money in terms of expansion turnaround. (And I'm talking the hay days of the Everquest expansion insanity.)

The thing about these Sims expansions/additional games, is that they're actually usually quality products that are worth the investment if you're a fan of the series (with a few exceptions on the Console versions). Hopefully Spore will stick to that tradition.

Great comic!

If you can milk something for money, a lot of companies will. The entertainment industry is just as bad.

Is it really milking a franchise when such plans were already made before even the first game shipped? For that matter, what use is a franchise if you can't make more than one game for it?

I would agree that this was milking if we were seeing a new Spore parts pack every two weeks for $20, but so far, I don't think we've reached the milking phase yet.

But I am looking forward to Space expansion, hopefully, it'll actually add some gameplay worth playing =)

I think the only way this comic could be more perfect for representing EA is if you fit a green floating object in there somewhere.

1 expansion. Fine. 4 games in one year, three of which are offshoots. Milking it.

A triple plus, sir. That's freakin' awesome.

I still tremble in fear of oversaturation every time I boot up Rock Band and see that EA logo sitting there. It's a shock (in a great way) that we haven't already seen stuff like Rock Band: Megadeth, or Rock Band: UB40. Though, I guess the track packs / 58,888,001 downloadable songs sort of go toward that mentality. . . .

Spore, the new Sims....

Or how about, Spore - Successful Program Other Releases Expected....

You know, at one time, decades ago, I actually liked EA, but now, it just feels like they've become the puppy mill of software.

Fine job on those teats... you must have really studied a few dairy cows to draw it that well.

...and golly, it's EA. We should expect this sort of thing by now. I agree with the puppy mill remark.. they buy one good bitch of a title, and breed it to death within five years.