EA is planning to shrink down the ambitious genre-buster for handhelds...

In an EA job posting on GameDev.net, it was revealed that the team behind Will Wright's highly anticipated project Spore is seeking a designer to help bring the game to various handheld platforms. Although no specific platforms were mentioned, it is a good bet that the current popular handhelds (DS, PSP) would be the most likely candidates. From the website posting:

The Spore team is looking for an experienced designer that will be responsible for designing, creating and maintaining game systems and content for SPORE Handheld titles.

Spore is the brainchild of renowned Sims creator Will Wright. Its scope of game design is ambitious, incorporating elements of creature-building, city planning and RTS (to name just a handful of the influences.) The technology is equally ambitious, aiming to utilize largely untapped procedural techniques to animate the endlessly variable creatures the player will be guiding through evolution. Additionally, plans for the game include a massive networked database of creatures and structures created by other Spore players that will be encountered in the course of one's own Spore experience. At least that is the case for the PC version.

While keeping in mind that no specific handheld platforms have yet to be confirmed, based on EA's DS version of Sims 2, a portable Spore on Nintendo's dual-screen sounds most intriguing.