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7 years ago
"Deshong04;c-16222051" wrote:"Writin_Reg;c-16221495" wrote:
They did. One at Maxis in Redwood City and one in Salt Lake City EA studios. They also had the store team at Salt Lake City Studios.
Personally I think the issue stems from the Smart Technology engine - that is the issue - made for multi-tasking, emotions, walk styles, and communicating between characters. There sounds to me there is little in this game engine that focuses on anything else we need our sims to do - so it is no wonder when we want sims to actually do something besides those things above - it all has to be made from scratch.
Okay, thanks."Erpe;c-16221590" wrote:
Yes Grant is a producer who just is in charge of the production and coordinates things. So in the beginning it sounds correct that he can’t do much because things just are chaos and experiments about inventing a new technology.
Maxis only has two studios left after EA closed both the Maxis studio in Emeryville (who made Spore and Darkspore) and the Maxis studio in Salt Lake City who made 4 EPs for TS3. So now Maxis only has the studio in Redwood (who makes the PC version of TS4) and the studio in Helsinki (who makes SimCity BuildIt, the console version of TS4 and maybe also most of the work on the Sims Mobile).
But to say that this is the reason why TS4 only gets one EP a year is to turn things around because EA didn’t “lose” the studios in Emeryville and Salt Lake. EA deliberately chose to close those studios because EA didn’t want to release 2 EPs a year anymore! The reason must be that EA didn’t think that it would be a profitable strategy anymore. So EA planned to release GPs as half priced “EPs” instead of one of the full priced EPs and apparently the GPs sell better than EPs because EA has now chosen to release twice as many GPs a year compared to the original strategy which EA used in the beginning.
So no! I don’t accept the idea that EPs are more difficult to make for TS4 than they were for TS2 and TS3 ;) That is in no way the reason why EA chose to close the studio in Salt Lake! EA just don’t want to release more yearly expansions than EA does now because then EA would expect sales numbers to go down too much. There is a limit to how much the average simmer will spend on the game each year!
So EA just gives Maxis more time to make each EA or let Maxis use fewer developers on making the EPs - and probably especially in the first months after each release of an EP.
I said the reason why I think TS4 is getting one EP a year is because of the limiting game engine. If every time they want to add something major, the case seems to be they have to first rewrite some things in order for it to be possible then incorporate the EP. But the game engine should already be what the game needs. When it comes to technology, TS4 already started out with something incapable of real innovation and was never meant to be a life simulator in the first place.
You can believe whatever you want and I'm going to come to my own conclusions.
Of course you are! But you are constructing “explanations” and ignoring the way a company like EA works.
EA don’t have a fixed number of developers working on the games. There are fewer developers working on TS4 than there were on TS3 and not because EA was unlucky to lose the studio in Salt Lake City which made 2 EPs per year for TS3 in both 2012 and 2013. EA didn’t “lose” that studio but deliberately moved it to less important games and then closed it down for good because couldn’t find something better for the studio to do!
So from the beginning EA planned to release fewer EPs for TS4 than EA had released for TS3. Why?
To answer that question we have to consider why a company like EA decides how many expansions to release for all EA’s games. Why have the Sims games always gotten more expansions than other games? And why haven’t EA released even twice as many expansions for each Sims game?
It wasn’t because EA didn’t have enough developers because EA closed both the Maxis studio in Emeryville and the Maxis studio in Salt Lake City. So why didn’t EA keep those Maxis studios and let them develop even more expansion for the Sims games?
To understand this we have to accept that it is about money. If EA releases too many expansions each year then the average simmer won’t buy them all. So when EA chose not to release even more it was because there already were signs that indicated that sales numbers would go down too much and that the average simmer wouldn’t buy even more.
So try to compare money instead of just comparing the number of big EPs: How much will it cost the average simmer each year to buy all SPs, all GPs and all EPs for TS4? Compare that amount to what it would cost such a simmer to buy the all SPs and EPs each year for TS3. Even considering the extra amounts a few simmers used in the Sims 3 Store I think it will be about the same.
So my point still is that the GPs isn’t something extra that EA wanted to release for TS4. The GPs were instead meant as replacements for half of the EPs already from the beginning! ;)
And the extra SPs were of course meant as a replacement for the Sims 3 Store.
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