EA really does need a kick in the gut. They've gotten complacent from having the only life sim of this caliber on the market. They feel like, since they have their audience by the nards to begin with, they can slack off and toss out any old thing and people will still buy the base every piece of DLC, because...well, where else are they going to go for their life sim/god game/ultimate architect/interior designer experience hybrid? Having other games that use the Sims formula and make innovations and provide a slightly different pace and feel to the gameplay will be a good thing for the whole life sim genre.
Genres with a lot of entries from multiple companies evolve and diversify onto a variety of different flavors. Platformers have grown and changed from 2D, "press right and jump to win" experiences like Super Mario Bros. into a variety of molds, from the shooter-platformer gameplay of the Mega Man franchise, to the speed-based gameplay of the Sonic games, to 3D collectathons like BanjoKazooie and Spyro, to puzzle-platformers like A Hat in Time and Super Mario Odyssey. Fighting games have moved from simplistic titles like Karate Champ, to Street Fighter II's blend of combos and special moves, to the bloody goodness of the Mortal Kombat games, to 3D martial arts mastery with series like Tekken and Virtua Fighter, to the weapon-based gameplay of the Soul Caliber games. Look at any game genre that has seen a lot of companies throw their hats into the ring, and you see lots of innovations, interesting-but-awkwardly-executed ideas, and even some successful dethroners-of-the-originator (the Street Figher games left Karate Champ smoldering in a heap as a footnote in gaming history, and Atari's Adventure is often forgotten in the minds of adventure game fans because The Legend of Zelda came along several years later and did it better). It's time for Sims-likes to grow as a genre, and for that to happen we need other companies putting out their own take on the formula.
