EA has always released a new basegame after at most 5 years and announced each new basegame about 15 months before its release because then the new basegame has been so close to be finished that it really won’t change much anymore. The reason for the release of a new basegame after 5 years clearly always has been that EA didn’t believe that new packs for a more than 5 years old basegame would be high enough and I don’t see why this should have changed. Therefore I expect the next basegame to be announced in very few months such that it can be released most likely in the middle of 2019.
But who knows? EA can of course surprise us all by stopping the series or just release SPs for 10 more years. I just don’t see a reason for EA to do that at all. We will know much more in just a few months though - one way or the other
I voted beyond 2025 because the thought of this forum then amuses me greatly.
I want it to go as long as the devs want to and are able to keep working on it. I'm sure Sims 3 players would say that game ended 'too early' for whatever arbitrary reason, and I wouldn't want Sims 4 to end just because of something arbitrary like the franchise anniversary. The gurus have said they expect it to go longer than previous versions, and not to take past release patterns as current ways to predict things, so I'm hoping for that.
I don’t think actually many Sims 3 players say that game ended too soon. It has 11 expansions with quite some substance, enough to still enjoy it years later. Same goes for Sims 2 and 1. Wanting it to go on just to be amused by those not amused is what I’d call an arbitrary reason.
I've never heard a Sims 3 player say the game ended too soon. They have wished more bugs were fixed before it was dropped.
I said 2020 for Sims 4 more in hope than expectancy. My fear is it goes longer. I still haven't gotten attached to Sims 4, although I keep trying. Of course, if I ever do get really hooked by Sims 4, that is a guarantee EA will stop production.
I voted beyond 2025 because the thought of this forum then amuses me greatly.
I want it to go as long as the devs want to and are able to keep working on it. I'm sure Sims 3 players would say that game ended 'too early' for whatever arbitrary reason, and I wouldn't want Sims 4 to end just because of something arbitrary like the franchise anniversary. The gurus have said they expect it to go longer than previous versions, and not to take past release patterns as current ways to predict things, so I'm hoping for that.
I don’t think actually many Sims 3 players say that game ended too soon. It has 11 expansions with quite some substance, enough to still enjoy it years later. Same goes for Sims 2 and 1. Wanting it to go on just to be amused by those not amused is what I’d call an arbitrary reason.
I feel like The Sims 3 could have had heaps more packs, like a true Vacation EP, Business EP, Hobby EP etc. I feel like there was heaps more to do.
And The Sims 2 ending when it did was horrible, I reckon they could have squeezed one or two more EP's out. The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection feels quite small in comparison to 3 or even 4.
They are launching The Sims Mobile in 2018 and they specifically said it would "be available alongside The Sims 4" and seems to be built so it can new content from TS4 in a transaction format.
Why launch a huge mobile game, and then end TS4 a year later and move onto TS5. That would make The Sims Mobile dead after a year basically.
Late 2019 or 2020 will be the end of Sims 4. It's probably not going further because that's where making a Sims 5 might become more profitable than developing new packs for this.
I voted beyond 2025 because the thought of this forum then amuses me greatly.
I want it to go as long as the devs want to and are able to keep working on it. I'm sure Sims 3 players would say that game ended 'too early' for whatever arbitrary reason, and I wouldn't want Sims 4 to end just because of something arbitrary like the franchise anniversary. The gurus have said they expect it to go longer than previous versions, and not to take past release patterns as current ways to predict things, so I'm hoping for that.
Unlikely that EA would draw the game out for more than 6-7 years. Definitely not over 10.
Going longer than previous installments could be as little as a year. A 2020 end for Sims 4 would be 7, which is 2 longer than Sims 3. Regardless, those plans are all determinant on the game continuing to be profitable. As any product ages it becomes less profitable, it’s just the reality of the product life cycle. With the price increases across several countries on Sims titles it will be interesting to see if that does pose a potential decline in sales.
But with that said, they have said The Sims 4 gets bigger each year.
In 2016, the player base grew "two thirds" which is huge. And then in 2017, active players grew 33%.
It would save them a huge amount of money to pump out more EP/GP/SP then build a brand new engine, unless they reuse TS4 engine like they reused TS2 engine for TS3.
I voted beyond 2025 because the thought of this forum then amuses me greatly.
I want it to go as long as the devs want to and are able to keep working on it. I'm sure Sims 3 players would say that game ended 'too early' for whatever arbitrary reason, and I wouldn't want Sims 4 to end just because of something arbitrary like the franchise anniversary. The gurus have said they expect it to go longer than previous versions, and not to take past release patterns as current ways to predict things, so I'm hoping for that.
I don’t think actually many Sims 3 players say that game ended too soon. It has 11 expansions with quite some substance, enough to still enjoy it years later. Same goes for Sims 2 and 1. Wanting it to go on just to be amused by those not amused is what I’d call an arbitrary reason.
I feel like The Sims 3 could have had heaps more packs, like a true Vacation EP, Business EP, Hobby EP etc. I feel like there was heaps more to do.
And The Sims 2 ending when it did was horrible, I reckon they could have squeezed one or two more EP's out. The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection feels quite small in comparison to 3 or even 4.
They could have made other choices (personally I was disappointed with the last one, science fiction and robots are not really my cup of tea, though the result turned out more enjoyable than I’d feared), but that’s a matter of personal preference. I’m not interested in running a business myself, IP for me fully meets my wishes for spending a vacation (in combination with features from other packs) and my sims have more than enough hobbies to choose from. You can’t have everything obviously, but Sims 3 doesn’t exactly lack content And considering there are also still people playing and enjoying 2, the same goes for that game. Personally I think any game benefits from being truely renewed every five years. Expecially a game with a weak and limited basegame.
I voted beyond 2025 because the thought of this forum then amuses me greatly.
I want it to go as long as the devs want to and are able to keep working on it. I'm sure Sims 3 players would say that game ended 'too early' for whatever arbitrary reason, and I wouldn't want Sims 4 to end just because of something arbitrary like the franchise anniversary. The gurus have said they expect it to go longer than previous versions, and not to take past release patterns as current ways to predict things, so I'm hoping for that.
I don’t think actually many Sims 3 players say that game ended too soon. It has 11 expansions with quite some substance, enough to still enjoy it years later. Same goes for Sims 2 and 1. Wanting it to go on just to be amused by those not amused is what I’d call an arbitrary reason.
I feel like The Sims 3 could have had heaps more packs, like a true Vacation EP, Business EP, Hobby EP etc. I feel like there was heaps more to do.
And The Sims 2 ending when it did was horrible, I reckon they could have squeezed one or two more EP's out. The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection feels quite small in comparison to 3 or even 4.
They could have made other choices (personally I was disappointed with the last one, science fiction and robots are not really my cup of tea, though the result turned out more enjoyable than I’d feared), but that’s a matter of personal preference. I’m not interested in running a business myself, IP for me fully meets my wishes for spending a vacation (in combination with features from other packs) and my sims have more than enough hobbies to choose from. You can’t have everything obviously, but Sims 3 doesn’t exactly lack content And considering there are also still people playing and enjoying 2, the same goes for that game. Personally I think any game benefits from being truely renewed every five years. Expecially a game with a weak and limited basegame.
Not only that but games start to get buggy and unstable with lots of dlc. I feel both ts2 and ts3 ended at the right time largely because they were starting to show some cracks.
4 is also starting to get more bugs that even with live service are getting hard to control. Combine that with how sales slowly drop over time for games, it is not realistic for a game like the Sims to keep going. I can't see it going on for more than ten years personally.
I voted beyond 2025 because the thought of this forum then amuses me greatly.
I want it to go as long as the devs want to and are able to keep working on it. I'm sure Sims 3 players would say that game ended 'too early' for whatever arbitrary reason, and I wouldn't want Sims 4 to end just because of something arbitrary like the franchise anniversary. The gurus have said they expect it to go longer than previous versions, and not to take past release patterns as current ways to predict things, so I'm hoping for that.
I don’t think actually many Sims 3 players say that game ended too soon. It has 11 expansions with quite some substance, enough to still enjoy it years later. Same goes for Sims 2 and 1. Wanting it to go on just to be amused by those not amused is what I’d call an arbitrary reason.
I feel like The Sims 3 could have had heaps more packs, like a true Vacation EP, Business EP, Hobby EP etc. I feel like there was heaps more to do.
And The Sims 2 ending when it did was horrible, I reckon they could have squeezed one or two more EP's out. The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection feels quite small in comparison to 3 or even 4.
They could have made other choices (personally I was disappointed with the last one, science fiction and robots are not really my cup of tea, though the result turned out more enjoyable than I’d feared), but that’s a matter of personal preference. I’m not interested in running a business myself, IP for me fully meets my wishes for spending a vacation (in combination with features from other packs) and my sims have more than enough hobbies to choose from. You can’t have everything obviously, but Sims 3 doesn’t exactly lack content And considering there are also still people playing and enjoying 2, the same goes for that game. Personally I think any game benefits from being truely renewed every five years. Expecially a game with a weak and limited basegame.
Not only that but games start to get buggy and unstable with lots of dlc. I feel both ts2 and ts3 ended at the right time largely because they were starting to show some cracks.
4 is also starting to get more bugs that even with live service are getting hard to control. Combine that with how sales slowly drop over time for games, it is not realistic for a game like the Sims to keep going. I can't see it going on for more than ten years personally.
WoW was released in 2004 and still gets expansions. I don’t play the game because I don’t like games that need paid subscriptions. But I have never heard people complain about that game becoming unstable and full of bugs in the same way.
I could say the same about other programs and games too. MMO games just get expanded forever while paid offline games usually aren’t supported more than at most 5 years. So I am sure that EA actually could fix the bugs in the games instead of just abandoning the games after 5 years. It just wouldn’t be profitable for EA because such old games don’t sell very well anymore and EA seems to clearly prefer to release a new well selling basegame instead of using more money to stabilize the old game. The problem with bugs seems to me clearly to be that EA assigns way too few programmers to work on bug fixing because EA can’t sell bug fixes anyway.
I voted beyond 2025 because the thought of this forum then amuses me greatly.
I want it to go as long as the devs want to and are able to keep working on it. I'm sure Sims 3 players would say that game ended 'too early' for whatever arbitrary reason, and I wouldn't want Sims 4 to end just because of something arbitrary like the franchise anniversary. The gurus have said they expect it to go longer than previous versions, and not to take past release patterns as current ways to predict things, so I'm hoping for that.
I don’t think actually many Sims 3 players say that game ended too soon. It has 11 expansions with quite some substance, enough to still enjoy it years later. Same goes for Sims 2 and 1. Wanting it to go on just to be amused by those not amused is what I’d call an arbitrary reason.
I feel like The Sims 3 could have had heaps more packs, like a true Vacation EP, Business EP, Hobby EP etc. I feel like there was heaps more to do.
And The Sims 2 ending when it did was horrible, I reckon they could have squeezed one or two more EP's out. The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection feels quite small in comparison to 3 or even 4.
They could have made other choices (personally I was disappointed with the last one, science fiction and robots are not really my cup of tea, though the result turned out more enjoyable than I’d feared), but that’s a matter of personal preference. I’m not interested in running a business myself, IP for me fully meets my wishes for spending a vacation (in combination with features from other packs) and my sims have more than enough hobbies to choose from. You can’t have everything obviously, but Sims 3 doesn’t exactly lack content And considering there are also still people playing and enjoying 2, the same goes for that game. Personally I think any game benefits from being truely renewed every five years. Expecially a game with a weak and limited basegame.
Not only that but games start to get buggy and unstable with lots of dlc. I feel both ts2 and ts3 ended at the right time largely because they were starting to show some cracks.
4 is also starting to get more bugs that even with live service are getting hard to control. Combine that with how sales slowly drop over time for games, it is not realistic for a game like the Sims to keep going. I can't see it going on for more than ten years personally.
WoW was released in 2004 and still gets expansions. I don’t play the game because I don’t like games that need paid subscriptions. But I have never heard people complain about that game becoming unstable and full of bugs in the same way.
I could say the same about other programs and games too. MMO games just get expanded forever while paid offline games usually aren’t supported more than at most 5 years. So I am sure that EA actually could fix the bugs in the games instead of just abandoning the games after 5 years. It just wouldn’t be profitable for EA because such old games don’t sell very well anymore and EA seems to clearly prefer to release a new well selling basegame instead of using more money to stabilize the old game. The problem with bugs seems to me clearly to be that EA assigns way too few programmers to work on bug fixing because EA can’t sell bug fixes anyway.
Isn't that an online game? Mmo kind of deal? Because those are slightly different in how they are managed and built up, from my understanding.
If it's like ddo (doungens and dragons online, for anyone wondering) for instance they will sometimes e's shut down servers to do maintenence and rework entire systems. I think if simmers were told that nobody could play the Sims for a day so the devs could rework stuff, people would get angry.
I voted beyond 2025 because the thought of this forum then amuses me greatly.
I want it to go as long as the devs want to and are able to keep working on it. I'm sure Sims 3 players would say that game ended 'too early' for whatever arbitrary reason, and I wouldn't want Sims 4 to end just because of something arbitrary like the franchise anniversary. The gurus have said they expect it to go longer than previous versions, and not to take past release patterns as current ways to predict things, so I'm hoping for that.
I don’t think actually many Sims 3 players say that game ended too soon. It has 11 expansions with quite some substance, enough to still enjoy it years later. Same goes for Sims 2 and 1. Wanting it to go on just to be amused by those not amused is what I’d call an arbitrary reason.
I feel like The Sims 3 could have had heaps more packs, like a true Vacation EP, Business EP, Hobby EP etc. I feel like there was heaps more to do.
And The Sims 2 ending when it did was horrible, I reckon they could have squeezed one or two more EP's out. The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection feels quite small in comparison to 3 or even 4.
They could have made other choices (personally I was disappointed with the last one, science fiction and robots are not really my cup of tea, though the result turned out more enjoyable than I’d feared), but that’s a matter of personal preference. I’m not interested in running a business myself, IP for me fully meets my wishes for spending a vacation (in combination with features from other packs) and my sims have more than enough hobbies to choose from. You can’t have everything obviously, but Sims 3 doesn’t exactly lack content And considering there are also still people playing and enjoying 2, the same goes for that game. Personally I think any game benefits from being truely renewed every five years. Expecially a game with a weak and limited basegame.
Not only that but games start to get buggy and unstable with lots of dlc. I feel both ts2 and ts3 ended at the right time largely because they were starting to show some cracks.
4 is also starting to get more bugs that even with live service are getting hard to control. Combine that with how sales slowly drop over time for games, it is not realistic for a game like the Sims to keep going. I can't see it going on for more than ten years personally.
WoW was released in 2004 and still gets expansions. I don’t play the game because I don’t like games that need paid subscriptions. But I have never heard people complain about that game becoming unstable and full of bugs in the same way.
I could say the same about other programs and games too. MMO games just get expanded forever while paid offline games usually aren’t supported more than at most 5 years. So I am sure that EA actually could fix the bugs in the games instead of just abandoning the games after 5 years. It just wouldn’t be profitable for EA because such old games don’t sell very well anymore and EA seems to clearly prefer to release a new well selling basegame instead of using more money to stabilize the old game. The problem with bugs seems to me clearly to be that EA assigns way too few programmers to work on bug fixing because EA can’t sell bug fixes anyway.
Isn't that an online game? Mmo kind of deal? Because those are slightly different in how they are managed and built up, from my understanding.
If it's like ddo for instance they will sometimes e's shut down servers to do maintenence and rework entire systems. I think if simmers were told that nobody could play the Sims for a day so the devs could rework stuff, people would get angry.
WoW is surely an online game. The income to the company mainly comes from monthly subscriptions even though people also have to buy the game and its expansions.
Yes, they need to shut the servers down shortly for maintenance sometimes. I don’t play WoW because it is based on paid subscriptions. But I play several similar free games and the maintenance breaks usually aren’t really a problem because they are short and because they are announced in advance and done at times where only few players are online anyway.
I don’t remember to ever have seen a break that took a whole day. Usually the breaks takes only at most 30-60 minutes. Many breaks are even shorter than that.
But the reason why MMO games usually never are released in new versions for me to see are:
1. The income from doesn’t come from selling the basegame which most often is free or something that we can try for free.
2. The companies needs as many gamers as possible to play the games. Either to maximize income from subscriptions or to maximize income from showing adds (in free MMO games). So the companies sure don’t want to lose the whole player base by releasing a new version of such games.
My guess is that the next Sims basegame will have more online options too. But I don’t think that it will become a real MMO game anyway.
But as usual I don’t expect EA to use many resources on fixing the bugs in TS4 and certainly not at all anymore when its last pack already has been released.
I'd Pray Sims 4 gets a good 10 years lifespan, Once I get the majority of what I want, I'd like an additional 5 years to enjoy the game before they usher in the Sims 5.
I voted beyond 2025 because the thought of this forum then amuses me greatly.
I want it to go as long as the devs want to and are able to keep working on it. I'm sure Sims 3 players would say that game ended 'too early' for whatever arbitrary reason, and I wouldn't want Sims 4 to end just because of something arbitrary like the franchise anniversary. The gurus have said they expect it to go longer than previous versions, and not to take past release patterns as current ways to predict things, so I'm hoping for that.
I don’t think actually many Sims 3 players say that game ended too soon. It has 11 expansions with quite some substance, enough to still enjoy it years later. Same goes for Sims 2 and 1. Wanting it to go on just to be amused by those not amused is what I’d call an arbitrary reason.
I feel like The Sims 3 could have had heaps more packs, like a true Vacation EP, Business EP, Hobby EP etc. I feel like there was heaps more to do.
And The Sims 2 ending when it did was horrible, I reckon they could have squeezed one or two more EP's out. The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection feels quite small in comparison to 3 or even 4.
They could have made other choices (personally I was disappointed with the last one, science fiction and robots are not really my cup of tea, though the result turned out more enjoyable than I’d feared), but that’s a matter of personal preference. I’m not interested in running a business myself, IP for me fully meets my wishes for spending a vacation (in combination with features from other packs) and my sims have more than enough hobbies to choose from. You can’t have everything obviously, but Sims 3 doesn’t exactly lack content And considering there are also still people playing and enjoying 2, the same goes for that game. Personally I think any game benefits from being truely renewed every five years. Expecially a game with a weak and limited basegame.
Not only that but games start to get buggy and unstable with lots of dlc. I feel both ts2 and ts3 ended at the right time largely because they were starting to show some cracks.
4 is also starting to get more bugs that even with live service are getting hard to control. Combine that with how sales slowly drop over time for games, it is not realistic for a game like the Sims to keep going. I can't see it going on for more than ten years personally.
WoW was released in 2004 and still gets expansions. I don’t play the game because I don’t like games that need paid subscriptions. But I have never heard people complain about that game becoming unstable and full of bugs in the same way.
I could say the same about other programs and games too. MMO games just get expanded forever while paid offline games usually aren’t supported more than at most 5 years. So I am sure that EA actually could fix the bugs in the games instead of just abandoning the games after 5 years. It just wouldn’t be profitable for EA because such old games don’t sell very well anymore and EA seems to clearly prefer to release a new well selling basegame instead of using more money to stabilize the old game. The problem with bugs seems to me clearly to be that EA assigns way too few programmers to work on bug fixing because EA can’t sell bug fixes anyway.
Isn't that an online game? Mmo kind of deal? Because those are slightly different in how they are managed and built up, from my understanding.
If it's like ddo for instance they will sometimes e's shut down servers to do maintenence and rework entire systems. I think if simmers were told that nobody could play the Sims for a day so the devs could rework stuff, people would get angry.
WoW is surely an online game. The income to the company mainly comes from monthly subscriptions even though people also have to buy the game and its expansions.
Yes, they need to shut the servers down shortly for maintenance sometimes. I don’t play WoW because it is based on paid subscriptions. But I play several similar free games and the maintenance breaks usually aren’t really a problem because they are short and because they are announced in advance and done at times where only few players are online anyway.
I don’t remember to ever have seen a break that took a whole day. Usually the breaks takes only at most 30-60 minutes. Many breaks are even shorter than that.
But the reason why MMO games usually never are released in new versions for me to see are:
1. The income from doesn’t come from selling the basegame which most often is free or something that we can try for free.
2. The companies needs as many gamers as possible to play the games. Either to maximize income from subscriptions or to maximize income from showing adds (in free MMO games). So the companies sure don’t want to lose the whole player base by releasing a new version of such games.
My guess is that the next Sims basegame will have more online options too. But I don’t think that it will become a real MMO game anyway.
But as usual I don’t expect EA to use many resources on fixing the bugs in TS4 and certainly not at all anymore when its last pack already has been released.
I think the subscriptions do help motivate bug fixing though, they are being paid constantly so they will want to fix up bugs because if people leave due to them, they lose money.
For those of us that purchased the base game of the sims ea is not making anymore money off of us, so they don't care about bugs.
To be 100% honest though I never really got into MMO games, so I can't say I have much experience with them.
If they actually bug fixed like MMOs are, that would be fine, I don't think they do though so I'm fine with games ending before they are unplayable.
Yes. But he also gave the reason which was that EA released both Cats & Dogs and TS4 for consoles in that quarter. In the next quarter EA likely will release only a SP and maybe a GP. So the result will likely be very different.
I voted beyond 2025 because the thought of this forum then amuses me greatly.
I want it to go as long as the devs want to and are able to keep working on it. I'm sure Sims 3 players would say that game ended 'too early' for whatever arbitrary reason, and I wouldn't want Sims 4 to end just because of something arbitrary like the franchise anniversary. The gurus have said they expect it to go longer than previous versions, and not to take past release patterns as current ways to predict things, so I'm hoping for that.
I don’t think actually many Sims 3 players say that game ended too soon. It has 11 expansions with quite some substance, enough to still enjoy it years later. Same goes for Sims 2 and 1. Wanting it to go on just to be amused by those not amused is what I’d call an arbitrary reason.
I feel like The Sims 3 could have had heaps more packs, like a true Vacation EP, Business EP, Hobby EP etc. I feel like there was heaps more to do.
And The Sims 2 ending when it did was horrible, I reckon they could have squeezed one or two more EP's out. The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection feels quite small in comparison to 3 or even 4.
I don't think you're accounting for tech limitations or instability issues. In retrospect, I believe EA now recommends players do NOT install all Sims 3 expansions simultaneously because it's difficult to run that way. This is not even really a consequence of the game, but rather any game could be expected to start exploding once it hits a certain file size beyond it's initial size. It reaches a point where they'd have to do a major update just to provide the game with stability, at which point they naturally ask themselves "why not just make a new game?"
Bethesda titles such as Skyrim are evidence it wasn't a Sims 3 exclusive issue, because they had an issue where character files beyond a certain file size would slowly become unplayable. Yes, the problem appeared far quicker on Playstation and Xbox rather than PC, but in all three it was noticeable. Bethesda eventually had to stop ignoring it because after four games of ignoring bug reports, Skyrim saw the Playstation completely incapable of playing the expansions initially because it's system was especially susceptible to this.
Realistically speaking, while some of us might've loved more content for Sims 3, it's likely that it simply would not have been able to handle much more without issues. The very same problem can afflict Sims 4, and that's why I'd recommend people realistically expect 2019 or 2020 as the final years and not cling to any pie-in-the-sky dreams like 2025.
Yes. But he also gave the reason which was that EA released both Cats & Dogs and TS4 for consoles in that quarter. In the next quarter EA likely will release only a SP and maybe a GP. So the result will likely be very different.
The other thing to consider is that this is 35% growth per year. The beginning of Sims 4 itself wasn't exactly impressive, so it's much easier to hit a 35% growth mark if we're talking 35% of 10 rather than 35% of 10,000,000.
This is likely why they prefer giving us percentages rather than hard numbers. A percentage sounds more flattering in this scenario. I would expect growth because....well, once upon a time I abandoned Sims 3 and eventually peeked back in in hopes that the expansions made it worth playing, and I'm sure people are doing that with this game too. Those probably aren't new customers to the Sims franchise, but more often it's probably old returning fans that were livid at release of Sims 4 and are now hoping that the new packs make it tolerable.
Yes. But he also gave the reason which was that EA released both Cats & Dogs and TS4 for consoles in that quarter. In the next quarter EA likely will release only a SP and maybe a GP. So the result will likely be very different.
The other thing to consider is that this is 35% growth per year. The beginning of Sims 4 itself wasn't exactly impressive, so it's much easier to hit a 35% growth mark if we're talking 35% of 10 rather than 35% of 10,000,000.
This is likely why they prefer giving us percentages rather than hard numbers. A percentage sounds more flattering in this scenario. I would expect growth because....well, once upon a time I abandoned Sims 3 and eventually peeked back in in hopes that the expansions made it worth playing, and I'm sure people are doing that with this game too. Those probably aren't new customers to the Sims franchise, but more often it's probably old returning fans that were livid at release of Sims 4 and are now hoping that the new packs make it tolerable.
That is the reason I bought the sims 4 a year ago. So I can totally see that being the case personally.
I guess I'll go with 2020. It seems like a safe bet to me. There have been subtle hints that the game will continue to get content past 2020, but I have my doubts.
What is FY 18Q3..? (I'm not surprised by the way, Rodiek already stated Sims 4 had a rocky start)
p.s.: Sorry, happens to me often, staring at something in complete confusion, then think 'heck, I'm gonna ask' and as soon as I have, bingo, I get it: federal year 2018 quarter 3. Not that I totally understand now, cause that means from July 1, 2018 to September 30, 2018. That's like... in the future...?
What is FY 18Q3..? (I'm not surprised by the way, Rodiek already stated Sims 4 had a rocky start)
p.s.: Sorry, happens to me often, staring at something in complete confusion, then think 'heck, I'm gonna ask' and as soon as I have, bingo, I get it: federal year 2018 quarter 3. Not that I totally understand now, cause that means from July 1, 2018 to September 30, 2018. That's like... in the future...?
FY 18Q3 means financial year 2018 third quarter. Financial year 2018 started on April 1 2017 and ends on March 31 2018.
Comments
But who knows? EA can of course surprise us all by stopping the series or just release SPs for 10 more years. I just don’t see a reason for EA to do that at all. We will know much more in just a few months though - one way or the other
I said 2020 for Sims 4 more in hope than expectancy. My fear is it goes longer. I still haven't gotten attached to Sims 4, although I keep trying. Of course, if I ever do get really hooked by Sims 4, that is a guarantee EA will stop production.
I feel like The Sims 3 could have had heaps more packs, like a true Vacation EP, Business EP, Hobby EP etc. I feel like there was heaps more to do.
And The Sims 2 ending when it did was horrible, I reckon they could have squeezed one or two more EP's out. The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection feels quite small in comparison to 3 or even 4.
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2024 makes the most sense.
They are launching The Sims Mobile in 2018 and they specifically said it would "be available alongside The Sims 4" and seems to be built so it can new content from TS4 in a transaction format.
Why launch a huge mobile game, and then end TS4 a year later and move onto TS5. That would make The Sims Mobile dead after a year basically.
Insta: https://instagram.com/jkarajs?igshid=oef2ymrand3g
But with that said, they have said The Sims 4 gets bigger each year.
In 2016, the player base grew "two thirds" which is huge. And then in 2017, active players grew 33%.
It would save them a huge amount of money to pump out more EP/GP/SP then build a brand new engine, unless they reuse TS4 engine like they reused TS2 engine for TS3.
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Not only that but games start to get buggy and unstable with lots of dlc. I feel both ts2 and ts3 ended at the right time largely because they were starting to show some cracks.
4 is also starting to get more bugs that even with live service are getting hard to control. Combine that with how sales slowly drop over time for games, it is not realistic for a game like the Sims to keep going. I can't see it going on for more than ten years personally.
I could say the same about other programs and games too. MMO games just get expanded forever while paid offline games usually aren’t supported more than at most 5 years. So I am sure that EA actually could fix the bugs in the games instead of just abandoning the games after 5 years. It just wouldn’t be profitable for EA because such old games don’t sell very well anymore and EA seems to clearly prefer to release a new well selling basegame instead of using more money to stabilize the old game. The problem with bugs seems to me clearly to be that EA assigns way too few programmers to work on bug fixing because EA can’t sell bug fixes anyway.
Isn't that an online game? Mmo kind of deal? Because those are slightly different in how they are managed and built up, from my understanding.
If it's like ddo (doungens and dragons online, for anyone wondering) for instance they will sometimes e's shut down servers to do maintenence and rework entire systems. I think if simmers were told that nobody could play the Sims for a day so the devs could rework stuff, people would get angry.
Yes, they need to shut the servers down shortly for maintenance sometimes. I don’t play WoW because it is based on paid subscriptions. But I play several similar free games and the maintenance breaks usually aren’t really a problem because they are short and because they are announced in advance and done at times where only few players are online anyway.
I don’t remember to ever have seen a break that took a whole day. Usually the breaks takes only at most 30-60 minutes. Many breaks are even shorter than that.
But the reason why MMO games usually never are released in new versions for me to see are:
1. The income from doesn’t come from selling the basegame which most often is free or something that we can try for free.
2. The companies needs as many gamers as possible to play the games. Either to maximize income from subscriptions or to maximize income from showing adds (in free MMO games). So the companies sure don’t want to lose the whole player base by releasing a new version of such games.
My guess is that the next Sims basegame will have more online options too. But I don’t think that it will become a real MMO game anyway.
But as usual I don’t expect EA to use many resources on fixing the bugs in TS4 and certainly not at all anymore when its last pack already has been released.
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Pets, Vampires, Parenthood, and toddlers all helped with that tons I'm sure. Last year was one of their best years content wise nobody can doubt that.
I think the subscriptions do help motivate bug fixing though, they are being paid constantly so they will want to fix up bugs because if people leave due to them, they lose money.
For those of us that purchased the base game of the sims ea is not making anymore money off of us, so they don't care about bugs.
To be 100% honest though I never really got into MMO games, so I can't say I have much experience with them.
If they actually bug fixed like MMOs are, that would be fine, I don't think they do though so I'm fine with games ending before they are unplayable.
I don't think you're accounting for tech limitations or instability issues. In retrospect, I believe EA now recommends players do NOT install all Sims 3 expansions simultaneously because it's difficult to run that way. This is not even really a consequence of the game, but rather any game could be expected to start exploding once it hits a certain file size beyond it's initial size. It reaches a point where they'd have to do a major update just to provide the game with stability, at which point they naturally ask themselves "why not just make a new game?"
Bethesda titles such as Skyrim are evidence it wasn't a Sims 3 exclusive issue, because they had an issue where character files beyond a certain file size would slowly become unplayable. Yes, the problem appeared far quicker on Playstation and Xbox rather than PC, but in all three it was noticeable. Bethesda eventually had to stop ignoring it because after four games of ignoring bug reports, Skyrim saw the Playstation completely incapable of playing the expansions initially because it's system was especially susceptible to this.
Realistically speaking, while some of us might've loved more content for Sims 3, it's likely that it simply would not have been able to handle much more without issues. The very same problem can afflict Sims 4, and that's why I'd recommend people realistically expect 2019 or 2020 as the final years and not cling to any pie-in-the-sky dreams like 2025.
The other thing to consider is that this is 35% growth per year. The beginning of Sims 4 itself wasn't exactly impressive, so it's much easier to hit a 35% growth mark if we're talking 35% of 10 rather than 35% of 10,000,000.
This is likely why they prefer giving us percentages rather than hard numbers. A percentage sounds more flattering in this scenario. I would expect growth because....well, once upon a time I abandoned Sims 3 and eventually peeked back in in hopes that the expansions made it worth playing, and I'm sure people are doing that with this game too. Those probably aren't new customers to the Sims franchise, but more often it's probably old returning fans that were livid at release of Sims 4 and are now hoping that the new packs make it tolerable.
That is the reason I bought the sims 4 a year ago. So I can totally see that being the case personally.
p.s.: Sorry, happens to me often, staring at something in complete confusion, then think 'heck, I'm gonna ask' and as soon as I have, bingo, I get it: federal year 2018 quarter 3. Not that I totally understand now, cause that means from July 1, 2018 to September 30, 2018. That's like... in the future...?