“Europe is the priority for Spore,” Patrick Buechner from Maxis told Eurogamer when asked why Spore’s EU release will happen two days before the US release on September 7. “Europe probably represents about 60 per cent or more of our PC business, so getting it right in Europe is going to be a real focus over the next few months. Getting the launch right, getting the game working right here, getting those online features working in Europe… Europe is the priority for Spore.”

Buechner says the time between now and September will be filled with polishing, tuning, and testing everything they can think of to make sure the game doesn’t have any major issues when it’s released.

In the meanwhile, producer Thomas Vu has told CVG that (next to PC, Mac, Wii and DS versions) they would love to release Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Spore as well but that there are several technical issues to think about before saying anything definite. “Yeah, of course we’d love to do it, but at the same time we don’t know,” Vu said.

A bunch of new screenshots have been released today as well, meaning there’s something new to see in our Spore gallery.

[See also: Spore gallery]