Do you think we will get another expansion this year?

"Armilus616;c-16528892" wrote:

"Erpe;c-16528700" wrote:

"Armilus616;c-16528355" wrote:

"Erpe;c-16527828" wrote:

"Armilus616;c-16526812" wrote:

"Erpe;c-16526595" wrote:

"Armilus616;c-16526488" wrote:
Judging by the way EA has set their policies shifting away from AAA singleplayer to competitive pay2win multiplayer mobile games as they believe this will be the future of the gaming industry, I highly doubt there will ever be a Sims 5.
They will keep releasing packs for Sims 4 at least until 2020, but after that, there will be no more new content for the Sims on PC.
The Sims Mobile Remastered will probably get more resoruces than Sims 4 in its entire existence when it is in developement.
EA will eventually stop producing games for the PC altogether at some point, focussing at mobile games only.

The markets for PC games and for mobile games are very different and there are no chance that EA will release a free online Sims game for PCs too within the next few years! The reasons are:
1. The big PC versions of the Sims games give EA many times higher profit than the mobile Sims games do. This is the reason why EA never has even considered to let the Sims Freeplay and the Sims Mobile become available for Windows PCs and Macs too even though a lot of other mobile games are available in such versions too!
2. The PC game mainly earn money to EA by making it possible to sell a huge number of extra packs which are cheap to make with the dedicated game engine which EA therefore has developed for each PC game. So EA would really like to make a Sims game with a lot of paid packs for mobile devices too! But this isn’t possible with current technology. Therefore EA makes free Sims games for mobile devices instead and has to be satisfied with income from showing adds and from selling extra but unnecessary stuff.

So even though I expect EA to soon announce “Sims 5” as an online multiplayer PC game I don’t believe at all that it will be a free game or that its packs will be free because that would reduce EA’s income and profit much more than EA ever would accept! Instead I think that EA likely sees the online multiplayer part as something that maybe can give EA even higher income by selling subscriptions too - or at least from showing adds in the game. It is more about porting this model from other multiplayer games from EA (like the Battlefield games and so on) to the Sims games too. But exactly how EA will do it we can’t know before the game is actually announced.

I think you misunderstood my point here.
I never said EA would make Sims 5 as a cross platform free to play game. What I said is the Sims 4 is likely to be the last Sims game on PC ever.
I think they will release a few mobile title where a very shallow base game, with not even half as much contentas Sims 4 base game, is downloadable for free, but with content and gameplay packs you have to pay for. Each pack about half the size of a stuff pack, but charging 20$ or something.
You say they have to release Sims 5 next year to atract new simmers. EA has stated multiple times that they believed the game market will shift towards mobile and PC and consoles will be abandoned at some point. So to them it would make sense to make the future of the Sims all mobile for younger players don't play on the PC anymore but on their phones and tablets. That is what they believe. That is why they released that plum cash grab of Dungeon Keeper Mobile.
Sims 4 will keep getting content, but there will not be a Sims 5. Not on PC or consoles. Ever. Unless EA decides that they cannot get enough profit from the Franchise and sell it to someone else.

Look at https://www.statista.com/statistics/292516/pc-online-game-market-value-worldwide/ The market for PC games is still growing and especially for online PC games! There is no way that EA will leave that very profitable market to just other game companies! ;)

Don’t be confused just because the market for mobile games is growing even faster (and especially in China) because the total market for games is growing too. This won’t stop very soon because countries like China and India have huge populations that put together are about 8 times as big as the population in the US or about 4 times as big as the population in Europe. So when the inhabitants in those two countries (and in many other countries too) start playing games almost as much as the inhabitants of Europe, Australia and North America do then making such games will become even more profitable than it is now! :)

We don’t know yet what will happen in a future that is even farther away. But mobile phones won’t replace PCs in any foreseeable future. The future for consoles is more insecure though and maybe smartTVs will be able to replace them as gaming devices after a couple of more decades?

I never said PC gaming is dead. Nor did I say PC gaming is about to die. I don't even believe that it will, at least for the next few decades.
What I said was that EA thinks it will die, and wants to leave the market before it dies.
EA's Ceos and management have stated that multiple times, as well as several dev.studios being re-structured for the production of mobile games and budget for PC projects being shortend and cut speaks volumes as well.
I do believe that they are wrong to believe that, for the reasons you've said. But just because they are wrong in our oppinion doesn't change their oppinon.
They will not invest in what they, for whatever reason, think is a dieing market. They try to get as much out of what they already invested and have their investments progressively smaller in order to guarantee a smooth transition, but ultimately, they are retreating from the PC market and have growing investments in the mobile market.
The attempt to make Command and Conquer a multiplayer online competitive free2play microtransactions mobile thing got generals 2 cancelled and the Command and Conquer franchise in ruins. Then there is the plum dungeon keeper mobile plum. Despite fans (including myself) longing for a proper Dungeon Keeper 3.

You are underestimating hugely how serious and well educated the managers in EA’s top are! Just read some of the background for EA’s current CEO on https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/ea-picks-ea-sports-vp-as-new-ceo/ They are not amateurs but highly skilled businessmen who never would have got their current jobs if they hadn’t been top trained in marketing and managing such a huge company like EA is! You can be very very sure that they are studying the market for games all the time and always are looking for ways to earn more money and you can also be very very sure that they won’t hesitate a second to close down games or studios that don’t give EA a satisfying profit for the investments!

Such people don’t think with their emotions but calculate carefully a lot of things that could give the company higher profit and they certainly don’t overlook that EA still can earn hundreds of millions of dollars on new PC games! ;)

But of course they don’t ignore either the fact that the market for mobile games are growing faster than the market for PC games and now also has become bigger. This just doesn’t mean that EA can afford to neglect its most profitable PC games at all!

So I don’t fear for the future for the PC Sims games at all in that way! My only worry is instead that EA’s market investigations clearly seem to have proved that SPs sell better than EPs and that about 11 to 15 yrs old simmers apparently are the huge majority of the customers because this almost certainly means that future Sims games will be just as simplified and almost childish as TS4 IMO is.

All your statement is saying to me is that if they say they think PC gaming is dieing (which they did multiple times. Google it. Take a look at youtube.) then they are most probably right bercause they have done way more research in that matter than you or I did or will ever be able to do.

I am thinking with my own feelings when I believe they are wrong and you are thinking with your feelings when you say they cannot abandon the PC and *MUST* announce Sims 5 now.
I agree that they can't abandon the PC *NOW* and boom! No more PC games from EA. They are making a gradual shift.
For that reason, I don't believe there will ever be a Sims 5. And if there is, it will probably be five to eight years from now till it releases and it will have a shorter development time and lower budget than Sims 4. Sims 4 let go of the open world and CAST for performence, had neither toddlers nor pools nor ghosts at launch and is still lacking a lot of what Sims 3 had from the very beginning, but it also made improvements over previous games.
I don't expect Sims 5, if it ever comes out, to have half as much content and gameplay as Sims 4. For the exact reasons I am telling you.
Also, it would be a giant waste of money to support two mayor sims titles at the same time.

Of course I could be wrong. I have been wrong again, and I admit it. You don't have to take my word for it.
You don't even have to ask me to provide a link or klick one. You could google it yourself.

I googled “PC gaming is dying”. But this only gave me some forums where gamers were worried about the future development of their favorite PC game and some discussion about the prices of gaming video cards which some PC gamers seem to think now are too high for them.

So instead I googled “the future of PC gaming” which told me that sales numbers were high in 2016 and 2017 and are expected to be at the same level in 2018. I also found a lot of information on https://kotaku.com/the-state-of-pc-gaming-in-2017-1821309273

So no. I can’t share your pessimism and it isn’t about what I want myself. Steam has more than a 100 million users and Origin is growing too.

I am not really a PC gamer anymore myself because I have mainly played on tablets in recent years. Also I don’t even know if I will return to PC gaming. Only that I soon will need some other games to play and good games are difficult to find. Both for PCs, tablets and consoles.

I am still following the Sims games for PCs though. But I need a better game than TS4 to start playing Sims on a PC. It could be TS5 but I strongly doubt it. Multiplayer isn’t something I need and if TS5 is multiplayer (as I expect) then it will likely be about as simplified and with as small worlds as TS4 has.

But I don’t doubt that EA will release TS5 too! :)