Electronic Arts Inc is very close to launching the highly-anticipated video game called Spore, a product with which the Silicon Valley software company has very high hopes of success.

A big success with Spore would come as a big breath of oxygen for a company that has been breathing with difficulty, financially, during the past six quarters. The main reason why EA lost money during that period was that its policy of turning out sequels for its Madden football game and other similar video games hasn’t been going very well.

Frank Gibeau, head of EA Games division of Electronic Arts, is in charge with the development of video game on which industry expert Will Wright has began working in 2005. The initial plans were to release Spore about one year ago, but the launch date was prolonged due to the need of polishing the game and finalizing features such as social networking.

"Spore is a huge priority for EA, and specifically for our EA Games label. This has been a big bet for the company over the last several years,” said Gibeau.

It's a Will Wright project that carries a level of expectations for quality and, frankly, success... and we couldn't be more proud of the product and we're very excited about it."

Spore will hit the European market on Friday and the North American shelves on Sunday. In short, the game it’s about overseeing the evolution of everything from minuscule organisms to larger ones and to planets and entire galaxies. One of the new and hot features of Spore is that users’ creations become part of the overall environment of the entire game and can be viewed by all players. It sounds a bit like the Sims, but the scale is way larger.

The company refused to reveal how much it invested so far in Spore, but, according to Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter, the entire sum would be of about $50 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.