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The Toddler expansion pack & why EA needs you to buy it.
TOLKIEN
Posts: 1,594 Member
Greetings Simmers, sharing some personal insight and thoughts to the difficulties EA/Maxis now face developing and justifying toddler content from a business point of view. EA is after all a publicly traded company that focuses on revenue.
Clearly Maxis (who's job it is to create content for EA to sell) has heard the cries for toddlers - with no lack of heavily PR spun responses to explain their omission from the Sims 4, they are clearly aware. However EA/Maxis now face a problem (from a business point of view) to justify toddler development which require a large budget and team to produce, its not like adding a new world. Toddlers require all new animations, textures, character models, interactions, objects TO interact with, programming, debugging, quality assurance - and more.
The real problem EA faces is how would toddler development equal the best financial return.
So first a few numbers officially and unofficially - the Sims 4 has been released for 4 months and according to the NPD (who track physical media sales) the Sims 4 has sold ruffly 1.24 million physical copies, with an increase of 80k between November and December.
That number might seem low, but keep in mind PC game revenue is wholly the domain of digital sales now (as heavily reported by industry including EA) - which the NPD does NOT track. So if we take the industry average of 70% digital sales vs 30% physical then the Sims 4 has probably sold a low-ball figure of 2-3 million copies digitally based off the reported physical sales.
Equaling a combined figure of ruffly 3-4 million sales overall (making more sense) AND accounts for most of the sim community/day one sales. Future sales now derive on new expansion packs indirectly promoting the base game, social/dlc marketing and advertised Origin event sales discounting the game over the next few years.
Bringing us back to the main problem, would a toddler patch increase the base game sales? Or would the creation and promotion of a toddler/family themed expansion be (more) profitable at this stage? After all, it would generate three streams of new revenue beyond generating new interest in the base game:
1. Sales of an expansion pack
2. New sales of the base game plus and sales of the expansion to go with it for new buyers.
3. Likely they'll release combination of both the base game and expansion all-in-one at a higher cost.
On the flip side a toddler themed expansion pack forces a new set of problems on EA - some of their own making.
They include,
A. For starters, demand - yes there is a demand for toddlers but is there ENOUGH demand and people WILLING to pay for a toddler based expansion? Would you be willing to pay $40 so you can install toddlers and a few related family content items to your game?
Leading to...
B. Piracy, this is a big one and I believe a toddlers themed expansion pack will be the most pirated of all expansion packs the Sims series has ever seen - many people simply justifying Toddlers should have been free to begin with and everything in between from cost to worth.
C. Backlash - if released as an expansion, its a PR nightmare waiting to happen that leads back to problem B above.
D. It won't be just the community that responds - but gaming press WHO REVIEW the expansion and in turn effect its metacritic score, which in turn effect game sales too. Its unavoidable that many will review it as the "toddler expansion" a danger in itself.
E. Multi-threaded expansion bugs (think complex interlinking issues) for toddlers and future limited content via further expansions. The later being a problem for players and savings for EA.
The bug issue is not only a QA nightmare, but a programmers too, plus crunching the team to resolve complex issues = sloppy fixes. Thats why we saw so many unresolved bugs in the Sims 3 life cycle as the game received more and more expansions complicating or threading bugs. It becomes harder to solve bugs the more you layer on - toddlers in this regard would be a nightmare if added as expansion content because they become a floating code rather then base code.
On the negative side (for players) Toddlers as a base game asset would likely have new content developed for in future expansions, but toddlers as an expansion asset would not necessarily be developed for (as not all players might have the toddler expansion or if its heavily pirated) - hence less reason to develop further toddler content for in new expansions, saving EA some money but bad for players.
Personally I'd seek the budget to introduce toddlers via a free patch with limited functionality and expand upon them via an expansion pack. Giving the best of both worlds and providing an incentive for people to buy the expansion who want more toddler content/depth, while giving the community what they want or don't.
EA is basically faced with a free patch with very little room for return if none at all (re toddler development cost) that the base game doesn't already provide or an expansion leading to a PR nightmare with questionable return - but it will sell.
See that is inevitable. It will sell. Eventually the PR nightmare will fade into the background and more people will buy the expansion pack over the years (at discount) hence equaling further return for EA's investment.
Sales are better then giving it away for free at a loss.
That's why EA needs you to buy it.
The question is, will you?
What do you think EA is betting on....
Clearly Maxis (who's job it is to create content for EA to sell) has heard the cries for toddlers - with no lack of heavily PR spun responses to explain their omission from the Sims 4, they are clearly aware. However EA/Maxis now face a problem (from a business point of view) to justify toddler development which require a large budget and team to produce, its not like adding a new world. Toddlers require all new animations, textures, character models, interactions, objects TO interact with, programming, debugging, quality assurance - and more.
The real problem EA faces is how would toddler development equal the best financial return.
So first a few numbers officially and unofficially - the Sims 4 has been released for 4 months and according to the NPD (who track physical media sales) the Sims 4 has sold ruffly 1.24 million physical copies, with an increase of 80k between November and December.
That number might seem low, but keep in mind PC game revenue is wholly the domain of digital sales now (as heavily reported by industry including EA) - which the NPD does NOT track. So if we take the industry average of 70% digital sales vs 30% physical then the Sims 4 has probably sold a low-ball figure of 2-3 million copies digitally based off the reported physical sales.
Equaling a combined figure of ruffly 3-4 million sales overall (making more sense) AND accounts for most of the sim community/day one sales. Future sales now derive on new expansion packs indirectly promoting the base game, social/dlc marketing and advertised Origin event sales discounting the game over the next few years.
Bringing us back to the main problem, would a toddler patch increase the base game sales? Or would the creation and promotion of a toddler/family themed expansion be (more) profitable at this stage? After all, it would generate three streams of new revenue beyond generating new interest in the base game:
1. Sales of an expansion pack
2. New sales of the base game plus and sales of the expansion to go with it for new buyers.
3. Likely they'll release combination of both the base game and expansion all-in-one at a higher cost.
On the flip side a toddler themed expansion pack forces a new set of problems on EA - some of their own making.
They include,
A. For starters, demand - yes there is a demand for toddlers but is there ENOUGH demand and people WILLING to pay for a toddler based expansion? Would you be willing to pay $40 so you can install toddlers and a few related family content items to your game?
Leading to...
B. Piracy, this is a big one and I believe a toddlers themed expansion pack will be the most pirated of all expansion packs the Sims series has ever seen - many people simply justifying Toddlers should have been free to begin with and everything in between from cost to worth.
C. Backlash - if released as an expansion, its a PR nightmare waiting to happen that leads back to problem B above.
D. It won't be just the community that responds - but gaming press WHO REVIEW the expansion and in turn effect its metacritic score, which in turn effect game sales too. Its unavoidable that many will review it as the "toddler expansion" a danger in itself.
E. Multi-threaded expansion bugs (think complex interlinking issues) for toddlers and future limited content via further expansions. The later being a problem for players and savings for EA.
The bug issue is not only a QA nightmare, but a programmers too, plus crunching the team to resolve complex issues = sloppy fixes. Thats why we saw so many unresolved bugs in the Sims 3 life cycle as the game received more and more expansions complicating or threading bugs. It becomes harder to solve bugs the more you layer on - toddlers in this regard would be a nightmare if added as expansion content because they become a floating code rather then base code.
On the negative side (for players) Toddlers as a base game asset would likely have new content developed for in future expansions, but toddlers as an expansion asset would not necessarily be developed for (as not all players might have the toddler expansion or if its heavily pirated) - hence less reason to develop further toddler content for in new expansions, saving EA some money but bad for players.
Personally I'd seek the budget to introduce toddlers via a free patch with limited functionality and expand upon them via an expansion pack. Giving the best of both worlds and providing an incentive for people to buy the expansion who want more toddler content/depth, while giving the community what they want or don't.
EA is basically faced with a free patch with very little room for return if none at all (re toddler development cost) that the base game doesn't already provide or an expansion leading to a PR nightmare with questionable return - but it will sell.
See that is inevitable. It will sell. Eventually the PR nightmare will fade into the background and more people will buy the expansion pack over the years (at discount) hence equaling further return for EA's investment.
Sales are better then giving it away for free at a loss.
That's why EA needs you to buy it.
The question is, will you?
What do you think EA is betting on....
Post edited by TOLKIEN on
23
Comments
Pretty much everything this.
SimGuruMax's comments on the subject of babies suggested that babies are actually a huge amount of work to implement correctly. I'm going to assume toddlers would be even more so.
"We've been attributing the state of The Sims 4 to greed but I think it's time to give sheer incompetence another look."
-Honeywell
+1, toddlers are PAID when we bought the base game. a game at the edge of fail, still thinking about cheating money? Maxis, next time before you put on your bar codes I suggest you better take a good look at your own worth.
kim
Abraham Lincoln
Pricefield forever.
Time Won't Keep Us Apart - A story.
MTS: SimsForever15 | Origin: vba152318 | Paradox: PixelsSquared | Simblr: PixelsSquared
They would have made more headway with the fans if they had been upfront and HONEST about what they were doing instead of quietly not mentioning a major, very major, omission - and then slipping the information in very late, like a sneak and treating it as a minor, "oh, by the way..." little thing. Really, EA? Well, I was born, but not yesterday!
I would buy it , if it came to an EP. Its not unreasonable to put them in one if you really think about it. EA is a business , after all ,and businesses have to make money.
Off topic , but I like your avatar. She's pretty.
kim
Abraham Lincoln
[img]http://www.🐸🐸🐸🐸.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/throwing-money-away.gif[/img]
I actually learned the lesson with TS3. How many things are broken and glitched and to this day have not been fixed. I have no faith in EA at all. If it had not been for my son, I would never gotten the game to start with.
kim
Abraham Lincoln
Your siggy is strangely fitting.
Pricefield forever.
Time Won't Keep Us Apart - A story.
MTS: SimsForever15 | Origin: vba152318 | Paradox: PixelsSquared | Simblr: PixelsSquared
Aw thank you
And there will be plenty of people who will spend lots of $$$ trying improve the base game. Good Luck.
kim
Abraham Lincoln