This thread focuses way too much on DLC IMO because the tendencies in modern games are about something else:
1. More and more games become online games and big offline games will most likely disappear completely. There are more reasons for that and it isn’t just about all games becoming multiplayer games. It is also about the competition where fewer and fewer gamers want to buy expensive games before they even have tried those games and know if the games are worth their money.
2. So the game companies have to deal with the above tendency where “free” games “sell” much better than paid games. There are only three ways of doing that:
a. To make their games free too.
b. To release a free trial version which only can be played for free for some time but then has to be upgraded to the full game.
c. To offer a general subscription where (almost) all games from the company can be played for “free” as long as we pay this monthly subscription.
3. Because the games can’t really be sold for as high prices as earlier to try to compensate for that the game companies instead offer more and more expensive DLC and also want to earn a lot of money by showing adds in their games.
We see this mostly for mobile games just now. But mobile devices are now just as powerful as PCs were just a few years ago and PCs are now getting touch screens too. So the difference between mobile games and PC games are about to disappear. Therefore there isn’t any doubt that the tendencies we have already seen for mobile games also soon will be valid for PC games. Only console games will likely still be a little different but only because they are more suitable for games that need a special controller and a bigger screen.
So what does this mean for a game like TS4? Probably not more than we have already seen because TS4 won’t become an online game. But future Sims games for the PC probably will (maybe already TS5 but if not then surely TS6). I don’t believe in the idea that EA will make more DLC for TS4 which also will depend on earlier DLC because this usually would just hurt the sales numbers. So I see the MFP SP only as an exception where they wanted to use small pets as the new gameplay content in a SP but then only could see clothes for cats and dogs as a useful option for the main content. I don’t believe that EA will do something like that again.
