"stilljustme2;c-16354765" wrote:
"Cheekybits;c-16354760" wrote:
Sims 5 is not going to come out for a long time. They’ve already confirmed they have a lot more content and sims 4 will have a longer development time. They just released a mobile sims game and there still working on sims 4 plus they’ve just released sims 4 on consoles. Unless they have a secret team working on sims 5 I don’t see where the resources and time is coming from. Plus with all the hints we’re getting in sims 4, there mind is clearly on stuff for sims 4.
If/when Sims 5 does develop, it's likely the game engine will be produced by a different team; some of the longer term developers/SimGurus might be called upon to consult regarding the development, but I don't even think they've even thought about what they want to see in the game engine.
Of course it is done by a different team - just like it isn’t the same team who are making the next SP, the next GP, the next EP and the Sims Mobile at the same time. The Sims 4 basegame was also in development in years while they released a lot of EPs and SPs for TS3 and also made a lot of stuff for the Sims 3 Store. EA is a huge company and so are the buildings in Redwood Shores where EA even also makes several other games at the same time. See
https://youtu.be/TXFpSLS1nz4
And read the description on http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/youll-find-virtual-gaming-every-corner-ea-sports-headquarters-165698/
I think they're probably watching the game trends to figure out what direction a Sims 5 would go. For example, if the game community settles on a VR standard, there could be a multiplayer version of The Sims utilizing VR, and players could actually play as their Sims and interact with people also playing as their Sims. Or that could be a spinoff version with either Sims 4 continuing or a new version of the beloved series taking over. It's currently just a wait and see process.
1. EA’s top takes all such decisions and leave none of them for the developers to make themselves.
2. EA’s decisions about which games and packs to make and how are all based on evaluations of the market.
3. A decision about whether to release a new basegame after 5 years (2019) or not had to be made by EA’s top already in 2015 or latest in the beginning of 2016 because otherwise there wouldn’t have been enough time to come up with new ideas and test those ideas such that TS5 could be very different from TS3 and TS4. (EA doesn’t want to make different Sims games too similar for marketing reasons.)
4. The developers only make the games and packs by following EA’s instructions. EA of course wants constant feedback from the developers and a lot of discussions about all the progress. But it is likely mainly the executive producer’s job to give that feedback and participate in those discussions although some of the other producers likely also participate from time to time.
EA’s top (the decision makers) is mainly interested in marketing and advertising. So they also get feedback from all the support people, sales offices all over the world and Origin all the time. They use this feedback to decide how to change the game, which content to make and when a new basegame should be released. So back in either late 2015 or very early in 2016 when they most likely took the decision about when they wanted TS5 released and soon after decided how it should be different from TS3 and TS4 they again just considered almost the same things as they did 5 years early for TS4. The result almost certainly was again to attempt to make TS5 ready for a release in the second half of 2019 because the packs sells less and less for an old game and EA has never made packs for a more than 5 years old game. Only MMO games have a longer life because their fans would become extremely angry if the current game server was taken down and therefore most likely just refuse to start over from scratch with a new game instead.
