Maxis announces SimCity 4

A big thanks to nekrosoft13 for posting this news in the forum. Maxis plans to unveil SimCity 4 at E3 in a few weeks, but we have some early details on this truly impressive game right now.

"We're doing more than just giving SimCity 4 an updated look." For starters, the game's econ engine will be brand new, and it will focus on the needs of the individual inhabitants of your city--of your individual sims--and not of the city as a whole. That means that your actions as mayor will have more of a local effect than a global one. For example, in SimCity 3000, placing a school anywhere within your city would satisfy your entire metropolis' need for education. While efficient, this technique wasn't exactly realistic, nor did it give the game a very personal feel. On the other hand, building a school in SimCity 4 will satisfy the education requirements of only the surrounding neighborhood and not your entire city. What's more, any actions you take will be felt more quickly than they were in SimCity 3000. "If you have a poor neighborhood in SimCity 4, and you try to make it better by building a school or a police station, you'll start to see redevelopment happen really quickly," Hogan said. "In SimCity 3000, redevelopment didn't occur until the game's random walk parser reached that area."

News source: GameSpot