EA is going new ways and wants to turn all its games into live services. EA also wants to expand EA Access even more. Sims 4 is a problem because it isn’t a real live service. But EA wants all its games to become online multiplayer live services. Therefore EA also already has even two such Sims games for mobile devices.
We just don’t know yet how EA will do it for future PC Sims games and Sims games for consoles too. But I am sure that EA has been experimenting with ideas which started even before EA released Sims 4 and now have been developed much further. So I expect those ideas to be the foundation for the next big Sims game. I just doubt that this next big game even will be called Sims 5 or that its release won’t happen before Sims 4 ends because I expect it sooner. EA needs a new big Sims game for the new very young generation of simmers-to-be and EA needs it already now.
Sims 4 will likely continue at least 3 years more. But I think that the reason mainly is that the next big Sims game will become so different that a lot of the current simmers wouldn’t switch to it anyway. EA will likely therefore just release packs for Sims 4 too until they don’t sell well enough anymore. I don’t know how many of them that will be EPs though because both SPs and GPs seem to sell better than EPs and the reason must be their lower prices.
