SimCity Beta Preview

18-02-2013

By Rob Stevenson

I got an email from EA over the weekend with an invitation giving me 24 hours to play a 1-hour beta of the soon-to-be-released SimCity game.

So I happily went off to download the game manager, Origin. Entered my invite code and it told me it's only available in Windows. Could have said that in the email!

Next fired up Virtual Box. Downloaded and installed Origin again. Downloaded SimCity, then launched it. Oops, Direct X error. Updated Virtual Box; enabled 2D/3D hardware acceleration and installed the admittedly experimental DirectX Drivers.

Now rather than SimCity telling me I don't have Direct X drivers it just silently fails.

Fair enough - can't fault anyone for this really, I know Virtual Box isn't a great gaming environment... Hint: 'Experimental'; I think I was being optimistic!

This is the first actual requirement I have had in my 8 years as a Mac user for for a boot camp partition. I think I'll just wait for the final Mac release :(

Rob Stevenson