It seems that not only has The Sims 2 PSP gone gold, but also it will be arriving early, December 7th rather than the projected December 13th. This will certainly allow EA to rack up some more sales in the pre-Christmas shopping season as well as allow desperate The Sims 2 players get their "game on the go" sooner. You can read all of the details at Gaming Age.

We are still flush with demo discs for The Sims 2 PS2. For those of you who have not bought the game but want to have a look, we are now simply sending out the discs on request. Either post here with your request (you will need to register so that you can PM us with address details) or send us an email with your request through the contact page with a proper subject line (eg, Send Me The Sims 2 Demo!) and your address details.

Head on over to Shacknews's Interview with Will Wright to get a better perspective on his views on the current state of the video game industry. The interview also gives a better understanding of Wright's designs, based primarily on "enormous webs of interconnected possibilities".

A news post from Gamasutra today notes how France is creating a set of video games ("jeux games") stamps that amoungst other famous titles like Donkey Kong and Zelda contains a stamp with two Sims from The Sims 2. You can see the stamps as well as the other games at http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=7210.

As we announced just under two weeks ago, Aspyr was having some issues with The Sims 2 and Mac OSX 10.4.3 creating problems for nVidia Mac owners. Thankfully, Aspyr has just released Patch 1.0 Revision C, which can be found here. All Mac The Sims 2 users should pick up this patch as it also fixes all of the following:

- Increases the file limit size in The Sims 2 and in Body Shop so now users with many installed packages won't experience any problems.
- Optimizes in game video capturing and rendering.
- Fixes some problems related to mirrors rendering reflections improperly.
- Adds unofficial in-game Italian language support.
- Fixed problems using the in-game content browser to connect to Sims2.com.
- Improved stability related to sound.
- Added support for Japanese character input
- Package installer now localized in Japanese and Italian.
- Fixes a conflict with NVIDIA video cards and OS X 10.4.3.

Thanks again to Bryce for his help!

EA has recently announced a new digital content distribution system similar to Valve's "Steam". For those of you without Half Life 2, Steam essentially allows Valve to deliver both games and update content on demand to players without the need of sending out any physical media. Along with this, Steam can "preload" files for games that are not yet released meaning that upon the official release date there is no line to wait in to get one's copy of the game. A recent piece on NFHQ notes that EA plans to employ this system to allow preloading of The Sims 2 Holiday Party Pack. As of yet there are no details as to how this content system will integrate with The Sims 2. You find the article at http://www.nforcershq.com/article4543.html.

According to a recent release by the NPD Group, The Sims 2 and The Sims 2 Nightlife both held top spots for games being sold in the week fo October 29th. The Sims 2 Nightlife came in at #7 while The Sims 2 edged in at #9. You can see the rest of the cames in an article at Gamecloud.com.

A recent piece from the paper Inside Bay Area discusses how games reflect the values of the designers, whether or not intended. More specifically, the article, Put on those thinking caps, boys and girls: It's game time discusses how in The Sims and The Sims 2 the designers put an emphasis on deriving hapiness from the home and not from the job. The overall idea behind the article is to focus not only games as real representations but consider their bias as one would with any media.

It seems as though some Mac users may be having issues after installing the latest OSX 10.4.3 update and running The Sims 2 on a machine with an nVidia card. Apparently the issue involves a pie menu that can only be seen while scrolling through neighborhoods, rendering the game unplayable. The only response to direct troubleshooting questions so far is this:

The 10.4.3 update did make modifications that cause these problems for Sims 2 users who have Nvidia video cards. We are currently working on a solution, so please monitor our Sims 2 support page for updates.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

So any Mac The Sims 2 users out there who have nVidia graphics might want to hold off a while on the update, if they have not already done so. We do not know if this is universal with nVidia cards or device specific as of this moment. As to whether or not the issue is caused by the update or a result of problems in The Sims 2, it is probably safe to say that the issue resides in The Sims 2. We will keep you posted on any information that crops to solve this (although so far reinstallation does not seem to be working), and a special thanks to Bryce Atkinson for alerting us to this.

You can now preorder The Sims 2 Holiday Party Pack (the add-on for current owners of The Sims 2) at The EA Store for a substantial $14.99. While you can get free shipping with a special code offer (SIMS2HLDYFS), many will be asking themselves how much a value this add-on really is.

While the Holiday Party Pack may seem a bit pricey, it certainly seems that won't be a problem considering that Gamasutra is currently running a piece mentioning how The Sims 2 Nightlife has already surpassed 1 million copies sold.

And for fun to wrap up The Sims 2 news of the day, head on over to the Novermber 2005 edition of Delta-Sky Magazine where Jay Heinrichs discusses The Sims 2 in relation to his life in an article entitled The Sim Inside Me.