EA boss confident Spore to debut 'before the holidays'

Speaking during an EA conference call, EA CEO John Riccitiello (who's a poet, though he may not know it) told an audience of hungrily-eying analysts that their long-time-coming sim-everything, Spore, wouldn't be making a fiscal 08 release (which we already knew, of course). So the question is, will it make a calendar year 2008 release, or be pushed back to 2009 (but still within EA's 2009 fiscal year)? Riccitiello wasn't about to give us a specific date (a blogger can hope, no?) but Gamasutra pegged him as "confident" and quoted him saying it would be released "before the holidays." We're hoping he means the "holidays" that happen in, say ... December and not, say ... April Fool's Day.