Scot Amos and Virginia McArthur, producers for the Sims 2 on Consoles and Handhelds respectively, send out community e-mails regularly to give a bit of news about the progress of these games. This time they talk about their trip through Europe and how they met press and community leaders in London, Amsterdam, Paris, Milan and Madrid. Virginia also mentions that the DS version will make use of the internal DS clock. Naturally there are also some new screenshots to check out, this time of the console and DS versions. Click the thumbnails below to see those - we've scaled down the console shots a bit to make them fit your screen more easily (although they're still big). The entire mail can be read in the Read More part of this post.

Stay tuned for an exclusive interview we held with Scot and Virginia on the event in Amsterdam. It will be posted here at the Sims Zone within a week!

Consoles:


DS:

"Hello Everyone!

"Times are super busy here at Maxis! With only a few weeks left before we ship our games, we have our teams playing the different versions and getting a sense for how unique each version is. It really is not until the end of our own projects that we get the chance to really play and compare the final builds from the other teams, it is fun to see how they came together at the end.

"We mentioned to you guys earlier that Scot and I were heading off to Europe to show off the games and we just got back. We went to London, Amsterdam, Paris, Milan, and Madrid, all in one week! It was a LONG week, but really worthwhile and you can not beat some of the meals we were having along the way, one of our perks for traveling. It was really great seeing everyone and showing off the games. We were also able to meet a few community managers and fans in Amsterdam, they came to see our products and we spent a few hours with them discussing the titles and they all were really excited. One of their first questions to me was which new handheld they should buy, a DS or PSP, I just did not have an answer for them as I have both! Overall, The DS and console were huge hits. People really loved all the things that we are doing on DS to take advantage of the hardware features like the touch screen navigation, painting, and the social game, the voice prompt/microphone music recording and real world weather patterns and time using he internal DS clock. Make sure to keep any eye out for the latest previews, especially from our community leaders in Amsterdam, as we get closer to shipping the games. If you see any, send them our way. We always love seeing them!

"Hasta Luego!"

Virginia

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"Hi There!

"I too have been playing our upcoming games around the clock - when not traveling all over Europe :-) I was telling our fans and community in Amsterdam to be prepared to loose a few hours of sleep as the Story Mode on Console can be completed in just under 50 hours. The community leaders and the press found the new Create-A-Sim and ease of controls in free-play mode to be really addicting. You should have seen some of the outfits they were coming up with! Direct Control also seemed to be a big hit with everyone. They all said they feel that Direct Control has made the console game much more accessible for players who didn't want to play the Sims on consoles in the past. We can't wait to hear all of your feedback though... we want to know what your favorite part of the games are once you get to play in a few weeks!

"In the meantime, have a look at some fresh new screens that Virginia and I pulled ourselves for you.

"Ciao Bello!"

Scot