Will Wright says EA's SimCity server issues were 'basically inexcusable'

SimCity creator Will Wright believes EA's SimCity server issues throughout the game's launch were "basically inexcusable," according to an interview with GameIndustry.biz.

"It was kind of like, 'EA is the evil empire, there was a lot of 'Let's bash EA over it,'" Wright told GamesIndustry. "That was basically inexcusable, that you charge somebody $60 for a game and they can't play it. I can understand the outrage. If I was a consumer buying the game and that happened to me, I'd feel the same."

In the interview, Wright said that he felt bad for the team and that he'd predicted "there'd be a big backlash about the DRM stuff." When asked about SimCity's DRM issues, Wright said that the game was in an "uncomfortable space."

"...like the uncanny valley, almost; [it was caught] between was it a single player game or was it a multiplayer game?," he said.

Wright also commented on the current state of games and the industry, stating developers have "only realized a small fraction" of the medium's potential. He said compared to what has been achieved with the medium, with its potential, that "we're falling way short." Wright went on to say that he isn't really excited about in the console market and believes the mobile and tablet market "feels like a wider frontier" to him.

SimCity was released in March and suffered crippling connectivity problems. Prior to the game's launch and consequent server issues, Wright featured in a video with SimCity lead designer Stone Librande where he discussed his gameplay experiences within the game.

Maxis will release a version 3.0 update for SimCity later this week. The game's first major update, version 2.0, was released April 22 and that update introduced new bugs.