Sims 4 is the best selling base game of the franchise.

"Elliandre;c-17386688" wrote:
I was exaggerating the amount tremendously it's true, sorry about that, but I have a hard time believing either object was so expensive that they couldn't include it. Maybe it's true, but I just can't believe it. I feel like they chose to save money on what they considered a cheap stuff pack that they felt didn't deserve two great objects. Maybe the objects that feel "missing" are being held for future costlier game or expansion packs, which is what has been hinted at by comments made by simgurufrost and others, that they may come in the future. Six months to two years in the future for all we know, or with a future online store where they can sell them individually and then those objects that feel "missing" are going to perform like "hero sales". This is what I personally think is the case.

If you compare object stuff packs in other games, there is no "one hero object" rule and the packs are designed to be cohesive based on the content theme in order to fulfill customer satisfaction. I really think their problem is that they create rules that don't need to exist and that they undervalue the stuff packs deliberately because they are only $10. Maybe they already know at some point they might want an in-demand object as a selling feature for a more expensive pack. Or maybe they just want to unleash an online store on us, and so are holding objects back that clearly belong with the themes already released.

Overall I think Sims 4 was amazing with the graphics and gameplay and there's no reason they couldn't have made double what they made in sales. Players are rejecting to buy as many expansion, game and stuff packs based on the quality of what's being included and the objects that they feel are missing. Quality is important. Also, someone told me that the FIFA games for EA make almost a billion dollars a year with in-app sales alone and I have a hard time believing someone is not eyeing the objects we want the most as little pots of gold for a future online store. I guess only time will tell.

It's all a matter of budgets. Yes, Sims 4 has made a lot of money, but that doesnt' mean EA has given Maxis the budget they need to give us the developments we want.

I look at it this way (Note all hypothetical values are for illustrative purposes only and are in no way intended to reflect the actual numbers, as I don't have the requisite knowledge to make good educated guesses for those)

Okay, we have 20 million unique users, of which we'll say half are still active (defined as buying expansions) to some degree, and a quarter of those are immediate completionists - so 2.5 million users actually buy every pack on release or close there to. Let's say this is what they use to figure out projected sales numbers. This means, $100 million per Expansion pack, $50 million per Game pack, and $25 million per stuff pack. And we'll say they get 10% of projected sales for each pack's total budget - Concept work, contracted work, payroll, art, etc - each with their allotted percentage of that budget.

They also have a certain time frame that each project must be delivered in. We'll go with 3 months for a stuff pack, 9 months for a game pack, and 18 months for an expansion pack (I'm sure those numbers aren't even close) so we have something to work with.

So bunk beds - they require a specialty employee to be assigned to the task (per the gurus), and the fine tuning will take, let's say, two and a half months to work out. And they still have to contract out the modeling work, which will take another month of back and forth. So bunk beds are already over on time requirements. The specialty employee also requires more money be allotted to payroll, which means that they'll have to reduce the amount of items in the pack to cover it. So we end up with a smaller pack that's got less overall gameplay for the sake of one element - that's also going to be late because the time required is simply greater than the time allotted for development.

And that's how bunk beds are "too expensive" for a stuff pack.

(It does not explain why they, and Loft beds, weren't in DU - I'd have gladly given up those sprites for Bunk/Loft beds.)

Minor edits for clarity