Am inclined to think corrupted, or at least broken. I have game saves on a different machine that are just as old, even older, that launch just fine. I have a lot of game files, so I cluster them in folders for playing rotationally.
What makes me think corruption is that a while ago, I forget when, I discovered that a lot of files in the current at the time save folder and the tray folder had an X in the icon at the far left of the file name. All the tray files had to be replaced (good thing I have two TS4 installations on different machines, though at different content levels). Games were started fresh, the victims being set aside. This past weekend decided to do a test on one of them. I have no idea whether the game or Microsoft is the culprit. A shame, as there were some interesting games and sims in those files.