I think Gamepacks will be limited to Refreshes now

"fae_brass;c-18022158" wrote:
Simguru Ninja's Twitter banner is of Granite Falls so maybe OR is the next pack update.......

That would be sweet. I want an OR Refresh anyway.

Maybe they also want to wait and observe sales results for a little longer, especially before everyone got their X-Mas gifts. Also, I think they might not be starting to work on another pack refresh before they see the results. Also I'm pretty sure it will take them at least 3 months of work on a pack refresh, possibly even longer as they will probably use people that are currently free to work on something, I doubt they have a special pack refresh team.

I still wonder how Spa Day got that many votes.

Edit: Omitted cause I didn't read something correctly.

Refreshes rather than Game Packs is not necessarily something that I would hate as there are a lot of Game Packs that could use some polish. Realm of Magic could have some magic for kids, the light rpg elements of Cottage Living would mesh well with the theme as well. Parenthood is a good pack, but I'd love to see some more work on it to give kids and teens more to do. More could be done with with Outdoor Retreat. Making over Strangerville to give you more to do there after the mystery is done, because it is a really nice world.

But then I'd equally be happy with new gameplay added based on other themes as well as long as the systems are well thought out and mesh with the rest of the game.

"83bienchen;c-18023933" wrote:
Maybe they also want to wait and observe sales results for a little longer, especially before everyone got their X-Mas gifts. Also, I think they might not be starting to work on another pack refresh before they see the results. Also I'm pretty sure it will take them at least 3 months of work on a pack refresh, possibly even longer as they will probably use people that are currently free to work on something, I doubt they have a special pack refresh team.

I still wonder how Spa Day got that many votes.

I agree that they wouldn’t have a special refresh team.
Maybe it’s the game pack team and rather than make a new concept they’re asked to tweak an existing pack? ???‍♂️.

The game pack least to get a refresh I think is StrangerVille. I can’t see how they’d add the to the mystery or tweak things.
At the moment my Sims can’t harvest bizarre fruit from the plants and I have to buy it at Erwin’s stall ??‍♂️.

OR and DO need a refresh badly, so I would not mind.

"LeGardePourpre;c-18024579" wrote:
Why nobody trust Maxis ?

They said no new "refresh" update is planned.
They said The Sims 4 is here for years, probably 15 years after the launch.

Refresh only shouldn't happen, more Game Packs will be released.

Many games under development are postponed due to COVID-19, maybe Maxis is slowed down too.

I haven't seen Maxis say there wouldn't be anymore refreshes.

"LeGardePourpre;c-18024848" wrote:
In term of money, free update is not profitable.

They need money to develop TS5, a ton of kits won't be enough for the next 7 years.

But free updates do foster at least some amount of "goodwill" which is sometimes worth more than money and can often boost profits in turn. Maybe not so much as brand new shiny things, but it's still nothing to dismiss out of hand as a fairly common business practice.

"VeeDub;c-18024853" wrote:

"LeGardePourpre;c-18024848" wrote:
In term of money, free update is not profitable.

They need money to develop TS5, a ton of kits won't be enough for the next 7 years.

But free updates do foster at least some amount of "goodwill" which is sometimes worth more than money and can often boost profits in turn. Maybe not so much as brand new shiny things, but it's still nothing to dismiss out of hand as a fairly common business practice.

Yeah, that's the positive side with refreshes. I think refreshes are popular with the community and will increase player activity, make people go back and play the pack again and try out new things. And that's potential new sales when they are releasing new packs. But I'm having a hard time seeing how refreshes will increase sales for some people because:

1. I don't think the people who never bought the pack when it was released will be interested in buying it now because of a refresh. They were most likely not interested in the pack to begin with.
2. I don't really see how a refresh will make someone new who have never heard of the pack more interested either because they will probably not understand what is new and what was old. Unless they like something specific from the refresh, but then the chance is pretty high that they had already bought the pack anyway because they were probably already interested in it.

"logion;c-18024878" wrote:

"VeeDub;c-18024853" wrote:

"LeGardePourpre;c-18024848" wrote:
In term of money, free update is not profitable.

They need money to develop TS5, a ton of kits won't be enough for the next 7 years.

But free updates do foster at least some amount of "goodwill" which is sometimes worth more than money and can often boost profits in turn. Maybe not so much as brand new shiny things, but it's still nothing to dismiss out of hand as a fairly common business practice.

Yeah, that's the positive side with refreshes. I think refreshes are popular with the community and will increase player activity, make people go back and play the pack again and try out new things. And that's potential new sales when they are releasing new packs. But I'm having a hard time seeing how refreshes will increase sales for some people because:

1. I don't think the people who never bought the pack when it was released will be interested in buying it now because of a refresh. They were most likely not interested in the pack to begin with.
2. I don't really see how a refresh will make someone new who have never heard of the pack more interested either because they will probably not understand what is new and what was old. Unless they like something specific from the refresh, but then the chance is pretty high that they had already bought the pack anyway because they were probably already interested in it.

You make good points, but I didn't necessarily mean that free updates would translate directly to increased sales of existing packs, though in some cases that might happen. I was more referring to the general idea of goodwill that companies like to build up for long-term profits, as in more potential overall sales for all the products they offer. But thinking with more focus on the current product (Sims 4, that is), I can think of a few packs that I might decide to go ahead and buy if they get refreshed in ways that I could like. I'm sure I'm not the only one; not everyone buys immediately/soon after release everything that they might buy, after all. I certainly don't. Some things need time to percolate. :sunglasses: