The chat with Neil Young, the new General Manager of Maxis since March, was quite a success. It's over though, and many questions have been answered. A few interesting things are that the first expansion for The Sims 2 will be released early next year, and there are currently 5 designs for expansion packs, with one being released approximately every 6 months. When the game itself is released in September, you can get it in either a 4 CD(!) version, or all on one DVD. The current plan is that the DVD will be for pre-order customers only, which means it won't be available in regular stores. However, that's subject to change, and of course we hope it'll be a stayer. About the release date: as everybody knows it should be in stores 17 September almost worldwide, but it may be a little earlier in some countries, depending on their usual release days for games. The release date for the Mac version of The Sims 2 has not yet been announced, but there definitely will be a Mac version. MySim pages on the official site will be enhanced for The Sims 2. New tools to create custom content will also be released, but most likely only after the release of the game itself. Something that should definitely be highlighted is that in some way we can expect multiplayer options to come to The Sims 2 next year, which will probably mean in the second expansion pack. It's not sure how that will work out exactly, though it's said it won't be a "Persistant World" (PSW) like The Sims Online is. Unfortunately that's all there's being said about it, but we should get more info about that next year.

About the Urbz, there's the news that it's currently planned to be released 16 November. Very interesting was the news that Maxis is planning to make Sims games (possibly the URBZ) for PlayStation Portable (PSP) and the Nintendo Dual Screen (DS). Finally there's some talking about SimCity 5, which is supposed to "go back to its roots" and Will's upcoming game. We'll probably hear the first official word about that game early next year, or at least "after the holiday season". You can read the entire transcripts, with also some personal information about Neil Young, on the Sims 2 site or the Sims 1 site.