So Sims 4 is a flop, because it ONLY was the best selling computer game in 2014, and not the best selling Sims game ever?
That's an... interesting... perspective.
That chart keeps showing up here. NPD is a PoS research group that is a paid service for businesses. That chart means absolutely nothing on it's own.
Then show some other data.
Sorry, but this entire argument is pretty pointless. Digital sales are not generally made publicly available. The only site I can find that shows any figures is wikipedia which shows sales of S4 at 2 million. Again, it's all conjecture and unless EA releases digital figures we'll never know for sure.
But I do know one thing about EA: If 4 had sold well they'd be shouting the numbers from the rooftops. Their silence speaks volumes to me.
Edit: grammar
Post edited by Wildley Curious on
“I was so sure that I knew what they needed and what I wanted to sell them that I never stopped long enough to find out what it was they wanted to buy.”
― Chris Murray, The Extremely Successful Salesman's Club
So Sims 4 is a flop, because it ONLY was the best selling computer game in 2014, and not the best selling Sims game ever?
That's an... interesting... perspective.
That chart keeps showing up here. NPD is a PoS research group that is a paid service for businesses. That chart means absolutely nothing on it's own.
Then show some other data.
Sorry, but this entire argument is pretty pointless. Digital sales are not generally made publicly available. The only site I can find that shows any figures is wikipedia which shows sales of S4 at 2 million. Again, it's all conjecture and unless EA releases digital figures we'll never know for sure.
But I do know one thing about EA: If 4 had sold well they'd be shouting the numbers from the rooftop. Their silence speaks volumes to me.
They wasted no time about bragging how much the Dragon Age (new game) sold did they? See, it's all very ironic. lol
ETA: They also waste no time in bragging how many units the EA Sports games sell. You can google all day long to see an article with EA bragging about how well those games do. (How many units those games sell) not money but units.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
So Sims 4 is a flop, because it ONLY was the best selling computer game in 2014, and not the best selling Sims game ever?
That's an... interesting... perspective.
That chart keeps showing up here. NPD is a PoS research group that is a paid service for businesses. That chart means absolutely nothing on it's own.
Then show some other data.
Sorry, but this entire argument is pretty pointless. Digital sales are not generally made publicly available. The only site I can find that shows any figures is wikipedia which shows sales of S4 at 2 million. Again, it's all conjecture and unless EA releases digital figures we'll never know for sure.
But I do know one thing about EA: If 4 had sold well they'd be shouting the numbers from the rooftop. Their silence speaks volumes to me.
agree and we also don't know how many used the great game guarantee and returned the game because they did not like it . I do know a few have come in the tech threads demanding their money back
Sims 4 didn't flop because of poor marketing. There is only so much marketing can do to put lipstick on a pig. They can't outright lie, though many people believe the marketing of Sims 4 already went too far as to show deceiving content/features that aren't possible in game. I believe a lot of the shortcomings of Sims 4 is directly related to the low minimum requirements. The culling, no CASt, no terrain editing, small worlds with limited places for lots, smaller lots, etc. is due to low minimum requirements. The same can be said for SimCity 2013, the small city sizes, disappearing sims, and incredibly bad pathfinding was due to the laughably low minimum requirements. The developers couldn't make a better pathfinding algorithm because that would require too much CPU power.
Look at GTA 5. Even the most powerful GPUs have a hard time running that game at ultra-quality. Only the newest and best GPUs (above $300) can even begin to get high quality sets. That's because the game needs a lot more than 2GB of VRAM. My Radeon 7870XT has to play with details turned down and no MSAA at all. Yet it still looks great. And it sold great too, at least 3.1 million copies have been sold on PC (the figures are months old so I would not be surprised if more than 5 million have been sold) alone and total sales are over 52 million (months old data again) across all platforms.
Maxis seems to be the only ones who release AAA titles that are gimped due to low minimum requirements. Other developers are pushing the envelope. I've never seen another AAA developer sacrifice on quality and content due to the need to make their titles playable on low-end laptops, it's just unheard of--probably because it's stupid. In the end, the difference between a budget computer and a mid-range gaming computer is around $300. Most of that money goes to the GPU. If people can't save $300 over a year or so, then they probably can't afford the game and the DLCs anyway. The point is that you cannot sacrifice so much quality in order to make the game playable for all, that strategy doesn't work.
I don't really think that TS4 was poorly marketed. The problem was that the new emotions and the new multitasking were the "big" things which EA had planned to make people just love the game. This also made most people buy the TS4 basegame. But already before the release of TS4 the information that TS4 didn't have neither toddlers nor an open world just stole people's attention. This wasn't at all what the marketing people in EA had planned. But it was too late for EA to do anything about it.
Its not even just all the missing aspects. Even the big marketing items like emotions, multi-tasking, and "smarter sims" are only half-baked at best. Like having no emotion to a spouse cheating right in front of you, how "smarter" sims will walk upstairs and across the house to wash their dishes in a bathroom sink instead of the kitchen one a few feet away, and I'm pretty sure multi-tasking and group convo's is why sims play musical chairs while eating dinner. So even the features they marketed hard pre-release ended up being a letdown, great ideas but poor execution. They removed a lot of the game to supposedly make these things work, they really needed to deliver and they didn't.
More parties and dancing isn't going to fix any of that, if it is even fixable at this point.
I think that they completely overestimated especially the value of the new multitasking. I believe the SimGuru who told us that this especially as very hard and tricky to make. But it didn't swipe our feet away in admiration because it actually didn't affect our gameplay that much.
So they used much too much time to make the multitasking and the new emotions in action (and also on the new build mode) and therefore had too little time to make everything else work. Therefore they removed toddlers and made teens the same height as adult to be able to use the same clothes and mostly the same interactions for teens and adults. They also simplified the old social reactions (as you mention) because they were asked by EA to focus on making TS4 into a new game without too much repetition from the earlier games. But this way of thinking simplified the game too much and the new things became not enough impressive. This is their problem now. The upcoming expansions will be made in a way which repairs this a little. But I don't think that they will manage to satisfy their old customers anyway because a lot of things can't be fixed now. We can only hope that they will make TS5 and that they have learned a lesson so TS5 will become a much better game.
I don't know that they overestimated on those things. I think they just under delivered. The emotions system, making smarter more natural acting sims, multi-tasking sims, etc. are all Super ideas. Maxis, whether due to being rushed or just not being able to pull it off, gave us all these in half-broken and semi-completed states.
If they had fully fleshed these features out I think they would have been great, much like the rest of the game though it is all unfinished. Which to me is the most upsetting part, "we lost all those base features and items and even entire life stages for this? a bunch of half finished new features to go along with all the old missing basics? really?". Even the new stuff they've released seems to be following this same formula. GTW had some great ideas in it, but they only went half way with all of it, in the end leaving it a frustrating mess.
Now there could be lots of reasons for this. Limited budgets and strict time lines from EA, poor project management and leadership, a weak and limited game engine, lack of talent and/or desire. Who knows, probably some combination of all those things and more.
I'll keep my fingers crossed for TS5 and hope as well that they take note and learn their lessons from TS4 well. The recent interviews though aren't painting a very bright picture on that front though.
I know this is just me, but I feel back for those who don't use their pc. I think you get far more superior game play with a pc.
It depends on your life and on how you play.
1. If you are never home and usually only play games in a bus or in short breaks at school then a PC isn't very handy. So why bring a PC with you if a phone or tablet is all you need?
2. If you only play for about 5 minutes every time you play a game then the traditional startup time for a PC is unbearable. A phone or tablet doesn't need any startup time at all.
Again, I feel bad for those who don't us a computer. They are missing out.
2 + 3 = 5
I should make a siggy out of it.
Do a remake of TS2, translating, remaining, enrichment of TS2 worlds as open TS3 worlds.
Bring back CASt. Feel free to sprinkle in the best features of TS4.
Of course 2+3+4= 9, and it will probably take up to The Sims 9 for EA to finally perfect the perfect Sims game.
You are an optimist
If the Sims 4 should be selling as poorly as a lot of people here seem to hope then it will only take a few months from now before EA will tell us all something like the following:
"We are closing down Maxis and during the next months we will be moving employees from Maxis to our other divisions. The reason is the sales numbers for PC games becoming lower all the time where especially the PC games developed by Maxis (SimCity and Sims) have been very expensive to develop without getting satisfying sales numbers. Maxis will finish a few more expansions for TS4 though because those expansions are already in development. But nevertheless we have also cancelled some of the planned expansions for TS4. Considerations about a future development of TS5 has also been completely stopped. The closure of Maxis doesn't mean that we won't continue the Sims franchise for other platforms though. We can mention that the Sims Freeplay also in the future will be one of our main games for mobile devices."
I just don't understand why people here don't see the danger that this could actually happen. Why would anybody here want this??
Wait... you're saying that people should support a game they don't like because of the risk that EA may misread it and close Maxis entirely?
The devs said the EXACT SAME THING with Dragon Age 2, yet complaints made them instead give more $$ and more time to make the next in the DA series.
Plus EA jumping to the conclusion that there's no market for City Simulators due to SimCity 2013 -- I'm positive they're aware of City Skylines. I'm not sure they're going to want to throw out an established franchise because one iteration does poorly, especially since they must have seen how that belief bit them once already. A lot of people on these forums have not taken a basic business class, but I guarantee you that most of the execs at EA have.
I know this is just me, but I feel back for those who don't use their pc. I think you get far more superior game play with a pc.
It depends on your life and on how you play.
1. If you are never home and usually only play games in a bus or in short breaks at school then a PC isn't very handy. So why bring a PC with you if a phone or tablet is all you need?
2. If you only play for about 5 minutes every time you play a game then the traditional startup time for a PC is unbearable. A phone or tablet doesn't need any startup time at all.
I can understand for those who need to be on the go however if they want to game PC games, they need a good gaming laptop if they want to be on the go with PC games. If not than miss out on the PC games they want to play and play app games on your phone instead . If you like to game on your phone you might like Fall Out Shelter. Its free, it has some features of the sims. My son and his friends like the game
Computer will start up a a lot quicker if you have an ssd hard drive.
Sims 4 didn't flop because of poor marketing. There is only so much marketing can do to put lipstick on a pig. They can't outright lie, though many people believe the marketing of Sims 4 already went too far as to show deceiving content/features that aren't possible in game. I believe a lot of the shortcomings of Sims 4 is directly related to the low minimum requirements. The culling, no CASt, no terrain editing, small worlds with limited places for lots, smaller lots, etc. is due to low minimum requirements. The same can be said for SimCity 2013, the small city sizes, disappearing sims, and incredibly bad pathfinding was due to the laughably low minimum requirements. The developers couldn't make a better pathfinding algorithm because that would require too much CPU power.
Look at GTA 5. Even the most powerful GPUs have a hard time running that game at ultra-quality. Only the newest and best GPUs (above $300) can even begin to get high quality sets. That's because the game needs a lot more than 2GB of VRAM. My Radeon 7870XT has to play with details turned down and no MSAA at all. Yet it still looks great. And it sold great too, at least 3.1 million copies have been sold on PC (the figures are months old so I would not be surprised if more than 5 million have been sold) alone and total sales are over 52 million (months old data again) across all platforms.
Maxis seems to be the only ones who release AAA titles that are gimped due to low minimum requirements. Other developers are pushing the envelope. I've never seen another AAA developer sacrifice on quality and content due to the need to make their titles playable on low-end laptops, it's just unheard of--probably because it's stupid. In the end, the difference between a budget computer and a mid-range gaming computer is around $300. Most of that money goes to the GPU. If people can't save $300 over a year or so, then they probably can't afford the game and the DLCs anyway. The point is that you cannot sacrifice so much quality in order to make the game playable for all, that strategy doesn't work.
I know none of these graphical terms that you use. LOL But though I do not have a "beast" of a machine, I can play GTA V just fine. Does it look like Rockstars version? No, but I'm able to have the majority of my settings on med. to hi. and it runs pretty great. I'm loving that game.
This is a just personal opinion, but I have a feeling that a lot of people at EA and Maxis just don't "gets" simmers, and they also don't view us a "real" gamers.
Sims 4 didn't flop because of poor marketing. There is only so much marketing can do to put lipstick on a pig. They can't outright lie, though many people believe the marketing of Sims 4 already went too far as to show deceiving content/features that aren't possible in game. I believe a lot of the shortcomings of Sims 4 is directly related to the low minimum requirements. The culling, no CASt, no terrain editing, small worlds with limited places for lots, smaller lots, etc. is due to low minimum requirements. The same can be said for SimCity 2013, the small city sizes, disappearing sims, and incredibly bad pathfinding was due to the laughably low minimum requirements. The developers couldn't make a better pathfinding algorithm because that would require too much CPU power.
Look at GTA 5. Even the most powerful GPUs have a hard time running that game at ultra-quality. Only the newest and best GPUs (above $300) can even begin to get high quality sets. That's because the game needs a lot more than 2GB of VRAM. My Radeon 7870XT has to play with details turned down and no MSAA at all. Yet it still looks great. And it sold great too, at least 3.1 million copies have been sold on PC (the figures are months old so I would not be surprised if more than 5 million have been sold) alone and total sales are over 52 million (months old data again) across all platforms.
Maxis seems to be the only ones who release AAA titles that are gimped due to low minimum requirements. Other developers are pushing the envelope. I've never seen another AAA developer sacrifice on quality and content due to the need to make their titles playable on low-end laptops, it's just unheard of--probably because it's stupid. In the end, the difference between a budget computer and a mid-range gaming computer is around $300. Most of that money goes to the GPU. If people can't save $300 over a year or so, then they probably can't afford the game and the DLCs anyway. The point is that you cannot sacrifice so much quality in order to make the game playable for all, that strategy doesn't work.
I know none of these graphical terms that you use. LOL But though I do not have a "beast" of a machine, I can play GTA V just fine. Does it look like Rockstars version? No, but I'm able to have the majority of my settings on med. to hi. and it runs pretty great. I'm loving that game.
This is a just personal opinion, but I have a feeling that a lot of people at EA and Maxis just don't "gets" simmers, and they also don't view us a "real" gamers.
In my case, perhaps they are right because outside of Portal this is the only game I play and love, but nowadays it feels like they don't even view us as "real" simmers
2 + 3 = 5
I should make a siggy out of it.
Do a remake of TS2, translating, remaining, enrichment of TS2 worlds as open TS3 worlds.
Bring back CASt. Feel free to sprinkle in the best features of TS4.
Of course 2+3+4= 9, and it will probably take up to The Sims 9 for EA to finally perfect the perfect Sims game.
You are an optimist
If the Sims 4 should be selling as poorly as a lot of people here seem to hope then it will only take a few months from now before EA will tell us all something like the following:
"We are closing down Maxis and during the next months we will be moving employees from Maxis to our other divisions. The reason is the sales numbers for PC games becoming lower all the time where especially the PC games developed by Maxis (SimCity and Sims) have been very expensive to develop without getting satisfying sales numbers. Maxis will finish a few more expansions for TS4 though because those expansions are already in development. But nevertheless we have also cancelled some of the planned expansions for TS4. Considerations about a future development of TS5 has also been completely stopped. The closure of Maxis doesn't mean that we won't continue the Sims franchise for other platforms though. We can mention that the Sims Freeplay also in the future will be one of our main games for mobile devices."
I just don't understand why people here don't see the danger that this could actually happen. Why would anybody here want this??
Wait... you're saying that people should support a game they don't like because of the risk that EA may misread it and close Maxis entirely?
The devs said the EXACT SAME THING with Dragon Age 2, yet complaints made them instead give more $$ and more time to make the next in the DA series.
Plus EA jumping to the conclusion that there's no market for City Simulators due to SimCity 2013 -- I'm positive they're aware of City Skylines. I'm not sure they're going to want to throw out an established franchise because one iteration does poorly, especially since they must have seen how that belief bit them once already. A lot of people on these forums have not taken a basic business class, but I guarantee you that most of the execs at EA have.
Only reason Bioware didn't get shut down was because of Mass Effect otherwise the mess that was DA2 would've killed them.
2 + 3 = 5
I should make a siggy out of it.
Do a remake of TS2, translating, remaining, enrichment of TS2 worlds as open TS3 worlds.
Bring back CASt. Feel free to sprinkle in the best features of TS4.
Of course 2+3+4= 9, and it will probably take up to The Sims 9 for EA to finally perfect the perfect Sims game.
You are an optimist
If the Sims 4 should be selling as poorly as a lot of people here seem to hope then it will only take a few months from now before EA will tell us all something like the following:
"We are closing down Maxis and during the next months we will be moving employees from Maxis to our other divisions. The reason is the sales numbers for PC games becoming lower all the time where especially the PC games developed by Maxis (SimCity and Sims) have been very expensive to develop without getting satisfying sales numbers. Maxis will finish a few more expansions for TS4 though because those expansions are already in development. But nevertheless we have also cancelled some of the planned expansions for TS4. Considerations about a future development of TS5 has also been completely stopped. The closure of Maxis doesn't mean that we won't continue the Sims franchise for other platforms though. We can mention that the Sims Freeplay also in the future will be one of our main games for mobile devices."
I just don't understand why people here don't see the danger that this could actually happen. Why would anybody here want this??
Wait... you're saying that people should support a game they don't like because of the risk that EA may misread it and close Maxis entirely?
The devs said the EXACT SAME THING with Dragon Age 2, yet complaints made them instead give more $$ and more time to make the next in the DA series.
Plus EA jumping to the conclusion that there's no market for City Simulators due to SimCity 2013 -- I'm positive they're aware of City Skylines. I'm not sure they're going to want to throw out an established franchise because one iteration does poorly, especially since they must have seen how that belief bit them once already. A lot of people on these forums have not taken a basic business class, but I guarantee you that most of the execs at EA have.
Only reason Bioware didn't get shut down was because of Mass Effect otherwise the mess that was DA2 would've killed them.
I don't know about that -- ME3 got SLAMMED hard at about the same time over the three-color ending. However, EA didn't buy BW for either ME or DA -- they bought it for Star Wars. That DA turned into an unexpected and lucrative success (there are far more than video games released for DA and EA owns the name) was great for them, and they do not want that cash cow to go away. They realized that people weren't happy, and with unhappy people, they could say goodbye to all of those royalties from books, comics, movies, etc. It was in their interest to spend the time to make DA3 far more popular.
I don't like the direction they took the series, but I will admit they were able to make it far more enjoyable just by taking their time with it the third time.
Edit: It's the same with the Sims series -- this is a well established name, and that in and of itself is valuable. They realize with unhappy people, they can see a loss in the sales of SPs and GPs -- the real bread and butter of the series. This is what will determine the fate of Sims 4 -- those sales. However, if it's not as profitable as they feel it should be, they probably will look into changing it.
Another edit: Interesting thing about Dragon Age: Origins. BW was bought during the production of that and part of the reason it was so buggy is that they just ran out of money, and EA wasn't passing out more. There were actually notes in the code that said they ran out of money to have things trigger where they wanted them to trigger (one of Loghain's dialogs comes to mind). EA really was not backing DAO too hard, and my guess is they expected it to die.
Wait... you're saying that people should support a game they don't like because of the risk that EA may misread it and close Maxis entirely?
The devs said the EXACT SAME THING with Dragon Age 2, yet complaints made them instead give more $$ and more time to make the next in the DA series.
Plus EA jumping to the conclusion that there's no market for City Simulators due to SimCity 2013 -- I'm positive they're aware of City Skylines. I'm not sure they're going to want to throw out an established franchise because one iteration does poorly, especially since they must have seen how that belief bit them once already. A lot of people on these forums have not taken a basic business class, but I guarantee you that most of the execs at EA have.
I don't see any danger of Maxis being shut down or The Sims series being shelved should TS4 be a flop from here on out. TS3 was too popular and made them too much money for EA to let the potential revenue go to waste. If TS4 has a succession of EP's that fail to meet expectations I could see them being more aggressive about getting TS5 development jumpstarted, but those saying "there will be no TS5 if 4 flops" is just straight up fear mongering. /shrug
Wait... you're saying that people should support a game they don't like because of the risk that EA may misread it and close Maxis entirely?
The devs said the EXACT SAME THING with Dragon Age 2, yet complaints made them instead give more $$ and more time to make the next in the DA series.
Plus EA jumping to the conclusion that there's no market for City Simulators due to SimCity 2013 -- I'm positive they're aware of City Skylines. I'm not sure they're going to want to throw out an established franchise because one iteration does poorly, especially since they must have seen how that belief bit them once already. A lot of people on these forums have not taken a basic business class, but I guarantee you that most of the execs at EA have.
I don't see any danger of Maxis being shut down or The Sims series being shelved should TS4 be a flop from here on out. TS3 was too popular and made them too much money for EA to let the potential revenue go to waste. If TS4 has a succession of EP's that fail to meet expectations I could see them being more aggressive about getting TS5 development jumpstarted, but those saying "there will be no TS5 if 4 flops" is just straight up fear mongering. /shrug
You seem to be missing the fact that if TS4 really should flop from here on out than EA won't get the money back which they are using on the development of the remaining SPs, GPs and EPs. So TS4 could actually end up costing EA money instead of giving EA a profit. This would make TS5 a dangerous experiment which could cost EA even more money.
The SimCity series started in 1989 and new versions was released every 4-5 years until 2007 where EA released SimCity Societies which flopped. Then EA for the first time waited 6 whole years before they again released a SimCity game in 2013. So no - in a time with sales numbers for PC generally going down EA probably won't take chances and use a huge amount of money on a new version of a game which already has flopped.
I think that we will get TS5 though. But if the remaining expansions for TS4 sell very poorly then EA will probably reduce the development budget for the development of TS5. This won't promise we'll for TS5 becoming a good game.
Wait... you're saying that people should support a game they don't like because of the risk that EA may misread it and close Maxis entirely?
The devs said the EXACT SAME THING with Dragon Age 2, yet complaints made them instead give more $$ and more time to make the next in the DA series.
Plus EA jumping to the conclusion that there's no market for City Simulators due to SimCity 2013 -- I'm positive they're aware of City Skylines. I'm not sure they're going to want to throw out an established franchise because one iteration does poorly, especially since they must have seen how that belief bit them once already. A lot of people on these forums have not taken a basic business class, but I guarantee you that most of the execs at EA have.
I don't see any danger of Maxis being shut down or The Sims series being shelved should TS4 be a flop from here on out. TS3 was too popular and made them too much money for EA to let the potential revenue go to waste. If TS4 has a succession of EP's that fail to meet expectations I could see them being more aggressive about getting TS5 development jumpstarted, but those saying "there will be no TS5 if 4 flops" is just straight up fear mongering. /shrug
You seem to be missing the fact that if TS4 really should flop from here on out than EA won't get the money back which they are using on the development of the remaining SPs, GPs and EPs. So TS4 could actually end up costing EA money instead of giving EA a profit. This would make TS5 a dangerous experiment which could cost EA even more money.
The SimCity series started in 1989 and new versions was released every 4-5 years until 2007 where EA released SimCity Societies which flopped. Then EA for the first time waited 6 whole years before they again released a SimCity game in 2013. So no - in a time with sales numbers for PC generally going down EA probably won't take chances and use a huge amount of money on a new version of a game which already has flopped.
I think that we will get TS5 though. But if the remaining expansions for TS4 sell very poorly then EA will probably reduce the development budget for the development of TS5. This won't promise we'll for TS5 becoming a good game.
Or they'll actually look at the feedback and realise the savage cuts caused the dissatisfaction and not try that again.
They are still making money out of TS3. Plenty of simmers have gone back and bought EPS etc that they missed and store content with the money TS4 would have had if it catered widely. They will be looking at why the retention rate for TS4 was an issue with many loyal customers who never before stopped buying. People like myself. Collectors who bought everything.
It will all come out if they choose to really study the reasons and not just try to continually blame the customers who had no responsibility in development direction. But it depends if they want to bother.
It won't been the fault of the consumer if TS4 fails. It will be the responsibility of the company and the decisions they made.
I just spent $80 on the sims 3 store just to show that I am willing to spend money just not on 4. I don't really need what I bought, I have cc that's better.
I just spent $80 on the sims 3 store just to show that I am willing to spend money just not on 4. I don't really need what I bought, I have cc that's better.
Yeah you are far from alone in this. I hope you enjoy what you bought anyway
Yes EA is more interested in getting new customers than in keeping (some of) the old customers happy. Therefore they change their games in ways that old customers often dislike. But it actually seems like EA's strategy works because their games sell very well and they are earning more money than any other game company.
Other game companies usually do much more to keep their customers happy. But they lose customers anyway and their series usually stop more quickly because they don't attract many new customers.
So I think that EA is just avoiding that their game series turn into something that only the few old customers who still hang on will buy.
I disagree with your remark on earning more than other companies, Show some stats and I might just believe you. If you think Sims 4 is keeping EA/Maxis afloat I do not think so, I am not a total EA hater and I like some of the EA games do put out but Sims 4 that is a different story, I do not hate Sims 4 but am disappointed in it. Right now IMHO Sims 4 is not balanced properly when it comes to features and I am not talking about open world because that is a closed issue. EA/Maxis cut out every feature they could and made a no frills version that has barely any technology in it and not put anything in to balance out the features cut. How can Sims 4 be top of the line when you cannot even edit your lot characteristics such as elevation and you cannot even create your own lots. One other thing why such a limited number of colors? Adding items do not do it for me. Also, why not incorporate a open neighborhood if you dumped the open world. There is only a very few apples in Sims 4, CAS, Building tools and Neighborhood connections and that is it. Emotions as I see it means nothing to me because it is bugged and being AI(artificial Intelligence) can never mimicked RL 100%. RF made it very clear that Sims 4 cannot possibly reach it's full potential.
As far as toddlers goes I truly never play with them but it was an option that was there. If an product cannot full it promises or wishes people move on to the next product because believe it or not EA/Maxis want the old and new players because that is money. Sims 4 was created out of opportunity and not convenience. Another thing you got wrong is series formula, when a company deviates from a formula that works well and do it cold turkey they tend to lose more customers if the company took a big risk. It is not wrong for a company to mix old with new and still expand on the old with a new twist as it is with DOOM that is coming out soon. EA/Maxis do not know how to tweak their games properly and their track record shows it. Blizzard messed up with D3 in the beginning and now D3 is back on track because Blizzard listened to it's customers. it is not a matter of pleasing anyone it called customer satisfaction especially if one is spending a lot of money on their games and it is understandable companies cannot give the customers everything under the sun but it should not beat around the bush and keep it's customers informed on what is viable and what is not. EA/Maxis has not been honest since day one. If one paid for something they have a right to speak their piece.
Omen by HP Intel®️ Core™️ i9- 12900K W/ RGB Liquid Cooler 32GB Nvidia RTX 3080 10Gb ASUS Ultra-Wide 34" Curved Monitor. Omen By HP Intel® Core™ i7-12800HX 32 GB Nvidia 3070 Ti 8 GB 17.3 Screen
Once folks start taking what is being said by RF & Co at face value, and stop trying to read in positive spin where none exists, I predict that these forums will be as dead as the SC forum is. (Not that it isn't headed that way already...) Sad.
“I was so sure that I knew what they needed and what I wanted to sell them that I never stopped long enough to find out what it was they wanted to buy.”
― Chris Murray, The Extremely Successful Salesman's Club
@Arletta@Erpe you may think you are telling something I don't know. I know. I'm not daft. But I'm an eternal optimist and I don't care what EA'S MO if I think that they have got my money and taken advantage I will say so. Because that is how I choose to do so. I'm not breaking rules, I'm not insulting anyone and I'm not telling you what to do with how you feel about the game. Please respect the right for me to do what I want to do, as you do as you will Thank you.
Yes everybody have the right to say whatever they want. But this isn't the issue here
My problem with the discussion in this forum is that people apparently think that they can threaten EA by saying"If I don't get toddlers now then I won't pay you about $30 for the next EP/GP and I know that a few others won't buy it either! And then you will go bankruptcy because you won't be able to pay the wages for your 8400 employees!" But you don't even buy enough games to pay even the wages for a single one of those 8400 employees. To think that you are able to threaten EA by having a few hundred simmers to not pay EA $30 each is just poor math because EA's income is about $4,000,000,000 each year. You just overestimate your power so hugely that it is nothing but laughable
Okay but why do you or @Arletta even care what people choose to do with their free time or money? Like if @sparkfairy1 or any one else wants to sit here on these forums and boycott TS4 until the end of it's run why do you care? You don't get any of that money. You don't work for EA. So again why do you care? And even if the 'haters' annoy you can easily put someone on ignore. Why make passive aggressive and even borderline insulting comments to people who are just trying to let their voice be heard to save a series they have loved for the past 15 years? Why go out of your way to basically to tell someone to 'shut up and go away'. Why? Because I truly don't understand. Like even if liked this game I would never put someone down by saying their comments didn't matter - even if it's true - because it's not my place. Like it honestly just sounds like you all are trying to kick someone while they're already hurt about something they truly care about.
I agree, I do not care if they think someone should do something else with their time because it is not about them it is about me and what I want to do and how I spend my time. If I am going to be heard, I am going to be heard whether one likes it or not.
Omen by HP Intel®️ Core™️ i9- 12900K W/ RGB Liquid Cooler 32GB Nvidia RTX 3080 10Gb ASUS Ultra-Wide 34" Curved Monitor. Omen By HP Intel® Core™ i7-12800HX 32 GB Nvidia 3070 Ti 8 GB 17.3 Screen
Wait... you're saying that people should support a game they don't like because of the risk that EA may misread it and close Maxis entirely?
The devs said the EXACT SAME THING with Dragon Age 2, yet complaints made them instead give more $$ and more time to make the next in the DA series.
Plus EA jumping to the conclusion that there's no market for City Simulators due to SimCity 2013 -- I'm positive they're aware of City Skylines. I'm not sure they're going to want to throw out an established franchise because one iteration does poorly, especially since they must have seen how that belief bit them once already. A lot of people on these forums have not taken a basic business class, but I guarantee you that most of the execs at EA have.
I don't see any danger of Maxis being shut down or The Sims series being shelved should TS4 be a flop from here on out. TS3 was too popular and made them too much money for EA to let the potential revenue go to waste. If TS4 has a succession of EP's that fail to meet expectations I could see them being more aggressive about getting TS5 development jumpstarted, but those saying "there will be no TS5 if 4 flops" is just straight up fear mongering. /shrug
Actually a member from the staff made a comment about no TS5 if TS4 is not successful and people just took it from there.
Omen by HP Intel®️ Core™️ i9- 12900K W/ RGB Liquid Cooler 32GB Nvidia RTX 3080 10Gb ASUS Ultra-Wide 34" Curved Monitor. Omen By HP Intel® Core™ i7-12800HX 32 GB Nvidia 3070 Ti 8 GB 17.3 Screen
Once folks start taking what is being said by RF & Co at face value, and stop trying to read in positive spin where none exists, I predict that these forums will be as dead as the SC forum is. (Not that it isn't headed that way already...) Sad.
Oh yeah, I remember that I used to visit it everyday until I seen the dates started getting old and there was no new threads or replies. Sims 4 IMHO is not invulernable as other games that are popular today just may not be in the future.
Post edited by Goldmoldar on
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Comments
But I do know one thing about EA: If 4 had sold well they'd be shouting the numbers from the rooftops. Their silence speaks volumes to me.
Edit: grammar
― Chris Murray, The Extremely Successful Salesman's Club
They wasted no time about bragging how much the Dragon Age (new game) sold did they? See, it's all very ironic. lol
ETA: They also waste no time in bragging how many units the EA Sports games sell. You can google all day long to see an article with EA bragging about how well those games do. (How many units those games sell) not money but units.
agree and we also don't know how many used the great game guarantee and returned the game because they did not like it . I do know a few have come in the tech threads demanding their money back
Look at GTA 5. Even the most powerful GPUs have a hard time running that game at ultra-quality. Only the newest and best GPUs (above $300) can even begin to get high quality sets. That's because the game needs a lot more than 2GB of VRAM. My Radeon 7870XT has to play with details turned down and no MSAA at all. Yet it still looks great. And it sold great too, at least 3.1 million copies have been sold on PC (the figures are months old so I would not be surprised if more than 5 million have been sold) alone and total sales are over 52 million (months old data again) across all platforms.
Maxis seems to be the only ones who release AAA titles that are gimped due to low minimum requirements. Other developers are pushing the envelope. I've never seen another AAA developer sacrifice on quality and content due to the need to make their titles playable on low-end laptops, it's just unheard of--probably because it's stupid. In the end, the difference between a budget computer and a mid-range gaming computer is around $300. Most of that money goes to the GPU. If people can't save $300 over a year or so, then they probably can't afford the game and the DLCs anyway. The point is that you cannot sacrifice so much quality in order to make the game playable for all, that strategy doesn't work.
I don't know that they overestimated on those things. I think they just under delivered. The emotions system, making smarter more natural acting sims, multi-tasking sims, etc. are all Super ideas. Maxis, whether due to being rushed or just not being able to pull it off, gave us all these in half-broken and semi-completed states.
If they had fully fleshed these features out I think they would have been great, much like the rest of the game though it is all unfinished. Which to me is the most upsetting part, "we lost all those base features and items and even entire life stages for this? a bunch of half finished new features to go along with all the old missing basics? really?". Even the new stuff they've released seems to be following this same formula. GTW had some great ideas in it, but they only went half way with all of it, in the end leaving it a frustrating mess.
Now there could be lots of reasons for this. Limited budgets and strict time lines from EA, poor project management and leadership, a weak and limited game engine, lack of talent and/or desire. Who knows, probably some combination of all those things and more.
I'll keep my fingers crossed for TS5 and hope as well that they take note and learn their lessons from TS4 well. The recent interviews though aren't painting a very bright picture on that front though.
They told how many units it sold. That is the same thing as saying multiply this by x amount of dollars. lol
But man, can they spin and dance!
They are amazing.
Again, I feel bad for those who don't us a computer. They are missing out.
Wait... you're saying that people should support a game they don't like because of the risk that EA may misread it and close Maxis entirely?
The devs said the EXACT SAME THING with Dragon Age 2, yet complaints made them instead give more $$ and more time to make the next in the DA series.
Plus EA jumping to the conclusion that there's no market for City Simulators due to SimCity 2013 -- I'm positive they're aware of City Skylines. I'm not sure they're going to want to throw out an established franchise because one iteration does poorly, especially since they must have seen how that belief bit them once already. A lot of people on these forums have not taken a basic business class, but I guarantee you that most of the execs at EA have.
I can understand for those who need to be on the go however if they want to game PC games, they need a good gaming laptop if they want to be on the go with PC games. If not than miss out on the PC games they want to play and play app games on your phone instead . If you like to game on your phone you might like Fall Out Shelter. Its free, it has some features of the sims. My son and his friends like the game
Computer will start up a a lot quicker if you have an ssd hard drive.
I know none of these graphical terms that you use. LOL But though I do not have a "beast" of a machine, I can play GTA V just fine. Does it look like Rockstars version? No, but I'm able to have the majority of my settings on med. to hi. and it runs pretty great. I'm loving that game.
This is a just personal opinion, but I have a feeling that a lot of people at EA and Maxis just don't "gets" simmers, and they also don't view us a "real" gamers.
In my case, perhaps they are right because outside of Portal this is the only game I play and love, but nowadays it feels like they don't even view us as "real" simmers
Only reason Bioware didn't get shut down was because of Mass Effect otherwise the mess that was DA2 would've killed them.
I don't know about that -- ME3 got SLAMMED hard at about the same time over the three-color ending. However, EA didn't buy BW for either ME or DA -- they bought it for Star Wars. That DA turned into an unexpected and lucrative success (there are far more than video games released for DA and EA owns the name) was great for them, and they do not want that cash cow to go away. They realized that people weren't happy, and with unhappy people, they could say goodbye to all of those royalties from books, comics, movies, etc. It was in their interest to spend the time to make DA3 far more popular.
I don't like the direction they took the series, but I will admit they were able to make it far more enjoyable just by taking their time with it the third time.
Edit: It's the same with the Sims series -- this is a well established name, and that in and of itself is valuable. They realize with unhappy people, they can see a loss in the sales of SPs and GPs -- the real bread and butter of the series. This is what will determine the fate of Sims 4 -- those sales. However, if it's not as profitable as they feel it should be, they probably will look into changing it.
Another edit: Interesting thing about Dragon Age: Origins. BW was bought during the production of that and part of the reason it was so buggy is that they just ran out of money, and EA wasn't passing out more. There were actually notes in the code that said they ran out of money to have things trigger where they wanted them to trigger (one of Loghain's dialogs comes to mind). EA really was not backing DAO too hard, and my guess is they expected it to die.
I don't see any danger of Maxis being shut down or The Sims series being shelved should TS4 be a flop from here on out. TS3 was too popular and made them too much money for EA to let the potential revenue go to waste. If TS4 has a succession of EP's that fail to meet expectations I could see them being more aggressive about getting TS5 development jumpstarted, but those saying "there will be no TS5 if 4 flops" is just straight up fear mongering. /shrug
The SimCity series started in 1989 and new versions was released every 4-5 years until 2007 where EA released SimCity Societies which flopped. Then EA for the first time waited 6 whole years before they again released a SimCity game in 2013. So no - in a time with sales numbers for PC generally going down EA probably won't take chances and use a huge amount of money on a new version of a game which already has flopped.
I think that we will get TS5 though. But if the remaining expansions for TS4 sell very poorly then EA will probably reduce the development budget for the development of TS5. This won't promise we'll for TS5 becoming a good game.
Or they'll actually look at the feedback and realise the savage cuts caused the dissatisfaction and not try that again.
They are still making money out of TS3. Plenty of simmers have gone back and bought EPS etc that they missed and store content with the money TS4 would have had if it catered widely. They will be looking at why the retention rate for TS4 was an issue with many loyal customers who never before stopped buying. People like myself. Collectors who bought everything.
It will all come out if they choose to really study the reasons and not just try to continually blame the customers who had no responsibility in development direction. But it depends if they want to bother.
It won't been the fault of the consumer if TS4 fails. It will be the responsibility of the company and the decisions they made.
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
Yeah you are far from alone in this. I hope you enjoy what you bought anyway
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
I disagree with your remark on earning more than other companies, Show some stats and I might just believe you. If you think Sims 4 is keeping EA/Maxis afloat I do not think so, I am not a total EA hater and I like some of the EA games do put out but Sims 4 that is a different story, I do not hate Sims 4 but am disappointed in it. Right now IMHO Sims 4 is not balanced properly when it comes to features and I am not talking about open world because that is a closed issue. EA/Maxis cut out every feature they could and made a no frills version that has barely any technology in it and not put anything in to balance out the features cut. How can Sims 4 be top of the line when you cannot even edit your lot characteristics such as elevation and you cannot even create your own lots. One other thing why such a limited number of colors? Adding items do not do it for me. Also, why not incorporate a open neighborhood if you dumped the open world. There is only a very few apples in Sims 4, CAS, Building tools and Neighborhood connections and that is it. Emotions as I see it means nothing to me because it is bugged and being AI(artificial Intelligence) can never mimicked RL 100%. RF made it very clear that Sims 4 cannot possibly reach it's full potential.
As far as toddlers goes I truly never play with them but it was an option that was there. If an product cannot full it promises or wishes people move on to the next product because believe it or not EA/Maxis want the old and new players because that is money. Sims 4 was created out of opportunity and not convenience. Another thing you got wrong is series formula, when a company deviates from a formula that works well and do it cold turkey they tend to lose more customers if the company took a big risk. It is not wrong for a company to mix old with new and still expand on the old with a new twist as it is with DOOM that is coming out soon. EA/Maxis do not know how to tweak their games properly and their track record shows it. Blizzard messed up with D3 in the beginning and now D3 is back on track because Blizzard listened to it's customers. it is not a matter of pleasing anyone it called customer satisfaction especially if one is spending a lot of money on their games and it is understandable companies cannot give the customers everything under the sun but it should not beat around the bush and keep it's customers informed on what is viable and what is not. EA/Maxis has not been honest since day one. If one paid for something they have a right to speak their piece.
― Chris Murray, The Extremely Successful Salesman's Club
I agree, I do not care if they think someone should do something else with their time because it is not about them it is about me and what I want to do and how I spend my time. If I am going to be heard, I am going to be heard whether one likes it or not.