In 1995 Maxis went public and had a revenue of $38 million. The company was bought out by EA in 1997. In 2000 EA published The Sims and it became the best-selling computer game of all time. By 2006 the franchise had earned over a billion dollars for EA. His latest game was Spore in 2008. The game sold more than 400 thousand copies in just three weeks. Wright earned a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2001. He was the first game designer to be awarded a fellowship in the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. In 2009 he left EA to run an entertainment think tank called “Stupid Fun Club”.