After a few years of dormancy, Maxis’ (via publisher EA) SimCity is coming back in a big way thanks to two new installments of the simulation so many know and love. The first, which will be available much sooner than the second, is oft-discussed SimCity Social, which will “port” the game to the social media universe, courtesy of Facebook. The SimCity Social page is already active and the game should be launching to the public–free to play–“soon,” maybe even as early as this month (June). Whatever the case, it will be sooner than the upcoming PC revamped edition, which will be available for purchase in February 2013.

SimCity Social is expected to be playable on Facebook this summer.

As for the PC revamp of SimCity, there are a couple of E3 videos up and running; the first of which is the standard, “let’s get everybody excited” trailer and thanks to the hard-to-miss update of the game’s graphics, the newest version of SimCity looks awesome:

The second video comes courtesy of GameTrailers.com’s E3 coverage and it features a gameplay walkthrough that gives potential players a great idea of what they can expect. The video features Kip Katsarelis, the lead producer of the next-gen SimCity, and his insight is quite valuable:

Considering SimCity’s long-established popularity, it should come as no surprise that the new footage didn’t escape the notice of Twitter:

The news apparently caught some by surprise:

It’s only been three years since The Sims 3, folks. Does the 2013’s SimCity look like it can duplicate the incredible success of the previous titles or has the idea passed its time? Considering the PC gaming community still has a strong affection for strategy games, it stands to reason SimCity will continue to do well.

[H/t to Boing Boing]