Re: the sims 3 (64-bit & metal) release

While I would agree that this is a... unique circumstance, giving information may not be a wise idea given that people tend to be upset when deadlines aren't met. Hell, I was incredibly upset when the Sims 4 came out as Windows-only and I had to wait for it to get released on the Mac.

Also, as to @OliverBones' post, here's what I have to say to that: don't think that @MaxisJoe and the rest of the EA team are unaware that their responses may not be as detailed as people would like. They have 14 pages of forum reply in this thread alone of people wondering when TS3 will be updated and playable on the Mac. While it would be nice if they could comment on my speculation on what might be causing them to take this much time on it, the NDA probably would be incredibly problematic and the whole EA team would probably not want to post an overly-technical explanation of what problems they are facing. While I might be able to understand it, others might not get a whole lot out of it. 

As for the claim that there's no money to get out of it, this is simply untrue. There is a lot of DLC to buy for TS3 and even if you're not charging people anew for the base game/any of the EPs and SPs, there's still a wide variety of DLC to purchase for TS3. Not to mention, people are still buying TS3 and the way that I know this is because there are also posts on this forum of people angrily talking about refunds on this forum because it's not compatible with Catalina.

TL;DR? Well, to quote Apu from the Simpsons:

Remain calm you will all have a chance to be gouged

I got my negative thoughts about EA, I really don't like it, it's a freaking money machine. And people are using the expansions yet, so the focus is not Sims 3, you can tell me what you what, but simply not that my thoughts are "untrue". In that case I'll turn it back to you and say it's untrue what you are saying.

And I'm not asking for a detailed technical recap, I'm just asking for an update like "hey guys, thanks for waiting, it does take some more time like a month" or whatever, but just staying quiet is the most stupid thing a company can do.

Those are my thoughts. Thanks for everyone getting in to them, but I'm not interested what others think about it, this was a direct feedback to EA.

It's not that simple, @OliverBones. As I've talked about here, the challenge ahead is not a simple one for a number of reasons, two of the major ones is that The Sims 3 was not built to be native to the Mac in the first place and TS3 (and all its expansions) are complicated pieces of software, so naturally, it's going to take a while. I'm not exactly sure how they're porting it over (if they're writing a fully native app in Objective-C or something similar or they're using some other library, which would be a stupid idea but I know full well that sometimes technical decisions are made by those who aren't equipped to make them. Not to mention, there's still testing to be done, further debugging, etc. So, naturally, things take longer to fix/refactor than originally expected.

For all I know, they could be in the weeds fixing something or rather that they thought would be a much simpler fix.

Sure, you can tell me that my cynical thoughts that with all the DLC and microtransactions and what not, my speculation that EA is able to pump money out of TS3 players for years to come and, thus has a profit motive to get this game fixed, is unfounded or untrue. And maybe I am wrong. Probably not about this, but stranger things have happened. 

In short, you're asking for something they aren't able to give at this point. Be patient. They'll update us when they're able to. They know how eagerly people are waiting for this.

I am just going to be honest here. EA is a huge company and have probably done things like this before. So I am just wondering how it is currently taking them over six months to update something which they have probably had at least some experience doing it before.

To answer your question, @1345annie, it's likely because TS3 wasn't built properly the first time over but instead, was released as a port using a piece of software that was abandoned by its developer years ago? In all likelihood, TS4 is a lot more stable and crashes a lot less than TS3 because it was built native for the Mac. So while there are lessons learned from maintaining TS4 for the Mac all these years and upgrading it to be 64-bit compatible, it doesn't underestimate the challenge that this wasn't built properly the first time around and as a result, a lot of technical debt accumulated. Technical debt that, in all likelihood, they're paying back right now.

i love the sims and i want play it forever

Tried to post this three times today, but it kept disappearing for some reason; I had to put down what I wrote on a Google Docs link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G3ZAMM4GQK8JY6QN-EYauOpzNz2gKRMqr3gbWQkINiE/edit?usp=sharing

So, I read through your post @johnchau95 and here's my response:

Here's the thing though, EA never made an explicit promise to update SimCity 2013 to 64-bit and considering that there hasn't been an update in a long time, I think it's reasonable to consider it as abandoned as Neverwinter Nights 2. The tragic reality is that any piece of software you buy lives on borrowed time. It's not just games but even more mundane things like e-mail clients (RIP Sparrow and Flock). However, EA has promised to update TS3 and we've heard from the EA staff twice about this and as recently as this week (or was it last week?), @MaxisJoe has come on here and let everyone know that progress is still happening on the game. Not only that but EA has worked on making TS4 64-bit and they delivered on that promise... albeit, late.

While it would be nice to see older (and abandoned) games enter the FOSS world once the developers decide not to update them anymore, tragically, that isn't going to happen. And it's not good. Some of my favourite games (Neverwinter Nights 2 and Keepsake are two examples) have been lost to the sands of time and are nearly unplayable on the Mac without some serious workarounds. 

but when will be