Long before CityVille sucked up your free time on Facebook, there was SimCity. Last night, as expected, EA announced that their Maxis studio is hard at work on a new entry in the city-building series. And like all good reboots, it’ll simply be titled SimCity when it’s released exclusively for the PC in 2013.
“We’d like to thank the millions of fans who have helped make SimCity synonymous with the city-building genre. This is a franchise that means the world to us at Maxis and we’re happy to be bringing it back home where we are reimagining it for an entirely new generation of players,” said Lucy Bradshaw, Senior Vice President of EA’s Maxis Label. “Using our proprietary GlassBox Engine, SimCity for PC will equip players with the tools to play the most sophisticated simulation of its kind. We are dedicated to making sure the experience – no matter the platform – has the fun, flavor and playability that has been intrinsic to the franchise since its birth.”
According to EA, everything in SimCity will be simulated: “Sims in each city will have jobs or can lose them, buy homes, be prosperous or be an economic drain on the city.” Besides this new level of complexity, the publisher also touted the game’s ease-of-use and accessibility, so SimCity fans of old should feel right at home.
But Maxis and EA are also working to add some fun stuff to the SimCity formula including a “robust” multiplayer mode and expansion content (SimCity Heroes & Villains) ripped from the pages of a comic book.
Finally, you can check out the game’s first trailer after the break.
