"drake_mccarty;c-16517375" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16517341" wrote:
I also heavily disagree with your assertion that they target “new very young simmers” - they are targeting the casual audience, which is about as broad as it gets.
One thing doesn’t contradict the other. I agree that they are targeting casual gamers. But TS4 surely didn’t target the Sims 3 simmers in the way it was made. So it almost exclusively targeted new simmers. Otherwise EA wouldn’t have dared to omit so many things from TS3 and simplify other things as much as EA did when they developed TS4.
I think that TS5 soon will be announced and that this was the reason why so many devs suddenly about a month ago saw a huge need to go on twitter and guarantee that TS4 will get new content for a long time yet because otherwise I couldn’t see any reason for them to do this. But if TS5 soon will be announced then I certainly can understand why they wanted to go on twitter early to prevent panic among the Sims 4 simmers ;)
TS4 was designed as an online multiplayer game, and that explains a lot of the design choices that were made for it. It has nothing to do with targeting new players, because the game was announced and promoted through the YibSim group who’s network really only extended to players of Sims 3 and fans of Sims on PC. It wasn’t until the game nearly flopped at launch when they shifted away from the YibSim marketing and tested out different ways of marketing the game to the broader, casual audience.
I don’t know where you are getting your information about a sequel, to my knowledge there has been zero information on that. We have heard of developers either leaving the studio entirely, or being moved to mobile projects. A sequel to Sims 4 won’t be a mobile game, and after the serious issues they had with the online version of this game I doubt they would go down that route a second time so quickly after it failed. As I said, there is only one studio developing the PC game, unless they are contracting development out to a non-Maxis studio there is no sequel in the works.
The Sims 4 is considered a service, which changes it’s development timeline and ultimately extends active production on the game. The repeated statements that Sims 4 is getting more content is a big indicator that there is not a sequel in production now, nor will there be one releasing for years. EA does not throw a bunch of money into Sims, developing two mainline games at once would be a significant investment which their track record does not support.
From what I remember reading, part of the decision not to make Sims4 a multiplayer at launch (and as you pointed out, supposedly it may have been developed for such a purpose originally) may actually have had more to do with the fiasco that happened with Sim City where it originally launched as a multiplayer for a game where players have played the series offline/locally and not alongside other players (the other, related disaster tied into that launch had to do with a major underestimate of the traffic upon launch and players getting locked out or a gross overestimate of the server capacity and what it could actually handle with traffic (ie not properly accounting for the scaling that would have been required)). There was such a massive outcry about the lack of that option to play locally and being forced to play multiplayer online that it may have also had an influence on the development of Sims4 given the fact that as with Sim City, players are more accustomed to playing their games on their own computers--not in a multiplayer setting.
Also, given EA's past history with the Sims franchise, usually after a new version of the game launches, typically sometime after-the-fact, they begin work on the next major installment (so, for example, Sims3 development supposedly began within a year or so into the launch of Sims2--usually in that situation, though, it would be an entirely different team within the studio working on it) just as it hasn't been unusual for them to continue issuing updates or new content for an existing game even after announcing the launch of the next major installment/version--in some cases, the new version even came to influence the existing game or a pack for it. For example, there was an expansion pack released for Sims2 toward the end that was heavily influenced by the stuff that the Sims3 team were working on for their installment (and this was well after Sims3 had been announced). Even as the launch of Sims4 was approaching, we still received some new content (albeit through the store) for Sims3. So, I can see development of one going on while support for the other continues--yet, obviously, not with two titles in release at the same time (where, again, historically, once a new installment of the game came out, development ended on the prior version--going back, again, to Sims2 where development ended on Sims1 after its release and so on and so forth).
I'm also not so sure I'd classify Sims4 as a "service" to be honest, again, especially when you consider their treatment of past games (even in the Sims1 era, prior to their work on the first expansion pack, we received new content every week for the game).
However, as to whether there may be a Sims5, I suppose we'll see. Regardless, given that the focus is still supposed to be on Sims4, I can see why the devs would make such a heavy emphasis upon the Sims4 as it remains the current installment of the game--and for EA, one of the games that remains a major source of revenue for them (at least, historically that had been the case--I'm not as sure about now, given the way the market has changed overall).
