'What we underestimated was a huge surge in pre-orders within the last week and the power of the great word-of-mouth created by the media and our community,' Bradshaw said. Maxis' estimates were too conservative, it turns out. But the release of SimCity this week brought with it unexpected demand and unforeseen technical challenges. Participation in SimCity's beta, Bradshaw said, along with other 'demand metrics,' helped determine how many servers Maxis estimated it needed at launch.

'More people played and played in ways we never saw in the beta. 'A lot more people logged on than we expected,' Bradshaw explained. 'Our number one priority is to give our fans the SimCity they deserve as soon as humanly possible'Īs for what went wrong in the first place, Bradshaw says it was a combination of factors, primarily driven by overwhelming demand. Added server capacity, along with software improvements, is resulting in positive progress, she said. 'Still, 80% is not good enough and so we are continuing to aggressively address this area.'īradshaw said Maxis expects to see 'great stability in the game' this weekend. 'We've addressed that and we've seen an 80% decrease in connectivity or responsiveness issues. 'We have teams producing new servers, but we've identified that many of our issues were related to how GlassBox managed the vast amount of simulation data through its database,' Bradshaw explained. In an email interview with Polygon this evening, Maxis general manager Lucy Bradshaw says the entire studio - with additional help from across Electronic Arts - 'has been against this challenge 24/7, working in shifts since the moment issues were being reported by our community.' Additional SimCity servers are being deployed to bear the load, but simply adding more hardware will not fix the game's current problems. SimCity developer Maxis says its efforts to increase server capacity are working, allowing more players to get into the game and reducing the number of 'disrupted experiences.'

For others, SimCity's connection problems meant long waits, lost cities and frustrating disconnects. For many players, it rendered the game unplayable. Since SimCity's launch on Tuesday, the game's always-online experience has been marred by severe technical issues.

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