The Sims 3 is official - although we won't get to hear any more about it until March 19th, the date when a NDA agreement barring release of data from a news conference is lifted. While you can get some more info from Strategy Informer, the best part might be the new website.

It would seem that EA has scored a further publicity coup by teaming up with several design schools to create exhibitions based on The Sims. The full article, entitled EA asks artists to celebrate 'The Sims' details that the exhibitions will be across multiple types of media and will compete for $36,000 in prizes. I'm sure that it will also be a great way for young artisits to get noticed by EA - not bad if they are heading in a graphic design or advertising route.

If you didn't catch yesterday's appearence of Will Wright on the Colbert Report, you can find it on YouTube. Wright talked mainly about The Sims, though he did mention that Spore is on track for release in the second half of next year.

GamaSutra has a piece detailing how The Sims 2 Glamour Life add-on pack topped World of Warcraft in September, continuing to assert The Sims 2's dominance in the gaming arena. Along with this, Open for Business and Nightlife respectively took the 10th and 11th tops spots. You can read the entire snippet at GamaSutra.

It seems as though Aspyr picked up a nice Apple Design Award at latest WWDC. The article noted that the Apple version of The Sims 2 needed to "show even more polish and take advantage of Mac specific features" in order to grab the award for Aspyr. You can see the full news piece on the award at IMG News.

The Sims 2 Open for Business expansion pack for Mac has hit Gold Master, according to the Aspyr website. This means that we can expect the game to be shipping in the next couple of weeks (perhaps even before September?). No word yet on whether or not Family Fun Stuff or Pets will be the next Mac The Sims 2 port.

Aspyr just added their The Sims 2 Open for Business page, giving further details for Mac users on the upcoming expansion pack including details on the system requirements. It seems that Open for Business should run fine on the new Mactel systems, with Intel chipsets listed next to the G4/G5 processor requirements (we assume the same universal binary patch for The Sims 2 Vanilla applies to Open for Business). No word yet on any add on pack ports to Mac.

The next add on pack for The Sims 2, "Glamour Life Stuff" was announced just a few days ago. The add on pack features new clothes and 60 new items including new home decor. You can read all of the details and check out a few pics at TheSims2.com. No official word yet on whether or not add-on packs Family Fun and Glamour Life will be heading to Mac. Considering that Family Fun has been successful for the PC version of The Sims 2, our guess is that they will announce it after the arrival of the Mac version of Open for Business.

The Mac version of The Sims 2 Open for Business has just gone into its Alpha stage, as reported by the Mac news site, MacMinute. With a scheduled release date sometime in September of this year, the expansion pack appears to be on track. No news yet on the assumed expansion pack for The Sims 2 PC relating to pets.

Aspyr has just recently posted on their projects page that Open for Business is in development for the Mac version of The Sims 2. The release date posted on the project page is September 2006, however the game is only listed as being in "early development" at this point.

Special thanks to Bryce for this piece.