On Wednesday during GDC 2012, three Maxis creative leads went into greater detail about the multiplayer aspect of SimCity (2013), reporting that the game will have a cloud saving feature which will work continuously in the background as the gamer plays online. A further list of specs reveal that the game will support a 16-player multiplayer scenario -- likely the "region" as described in the official announcement.
On Wednesday Maxis said that SimCity was "built from the ground up to support online" gameplay. The team also mentioned "play anywhere," meaning that gamers can play SimCity across a variety of different devices. This is interesting given the PC-focused announcement released early Wednesday morning. However there's speculation that the game will be playable on devices with a web browser, although the fully-featured version will likely reside as an installed application on the PC.
During the event Maxis also revealed that SimCity was designed to support mods. "We're huge fans of our modding community," creative director Ocean Quigley told the audience. "We've designed all this stuff to be moddable."
"We know modding is hugely important to our community," Quigley added. "We know the reason why people are still playing SimCity 4 ten years later is because the modding community has kept it alive. GlassBox is built to be moddable, but beyond that we haven't announced anything"
Maxis will be using the same package format The Sims and SimCity 4 used, he said. This should make it easier for SimCity 4 modders to make the jump to the new GlassBox engine.
Now for the system requirements. Electronic Arts has posted a single list via Origin, as follows:
Processor:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4000+ or better
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor 2.0 GHz or better
Operating System:
Windows XP/Vista/7
RAM:
Windows XP: 1.5GB
Windows Vista and Windows 7: 2GB
PCs using a built-in graphical chipset are recommended to have 2 GB RAM
Graphics Card:
ATI X1800 or better*
nVidia 7800 or better*
Intel 4100 Integrated Graphics or better*
DVD-ROM:
8x or better
*Minimum of 256 MB of on-board RAM and Shader 3.0 or better support.
EA is already teasing a $79.99 Digital Deluxe Edition and a $59.99 Limited Edition. The latter LE edition sounds awesome, packing super hero and evil villain lairs, characters, crime waves, and associated items. The Deluxe Edition sounds quite different, containing British, French, and German city sets which include popular landmarks like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, London's famous double-decker bus and more.
