Spore to go on sale in September

Unveiled in 2005 the eagerly anticipated game was originally expected to be on shop shelves in 2007.

Development problems delayed the ambitious game which lets players take creatures from their unicellular origins to the conquest of space.

The game will be released worldwide and will be available for the PC, Mac, Nintendo DS and some mobile phones.

Sales target

"The wait is almost over," said Will Wright, chief designer for the title at game-maker Maxis, in a statement.

"We're in our final stages of testing and polish with Spore, and the team at Maxis can't wait to see the cosmos of content created by the community later this year," continued the statement.

Europeans will get the game two days earlier than their US counterparts.

Maxis has described Spore as a "massively single-player" game. It lets people oversee the development of their creatures themselves but will use the net to let the beasts roam virtual universes to meet, and sometimes wage war on, the creations of other players.

The company is planning to release the creature editor for the game prior to give people a chance to experience one of its core elements prior to the full release.

Mr Wright is the brains behind the SimCity series of games and the hugely successful Sims titles that lets players control virtual people.

The news about Spore was released during a meeting between Maxis owner EA and analysts at which it said it had set itself a sales target of $6bn (£3.05bn) by the end of its financial year in 2011.

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