When Do You Think Sims 4 Will End?

"Writin_Reg;c-16317238" wrote:
Yeah you can read anything you want on Wiki and google search.

It is all irreverent to the facts regardless. EA will do what they want to do - and we either accept it or we don't - but truthfully no one but EA knows what they are going to do and when.

I agree. But if we want to make intelligent guesses and not just unrealistic wishes about EA’s future decisions then we still need to understand what EA is and how its decisions are made. This is the reason why I am interested in such things at all.

Simmers always seem instead to just use wishfull thinking or to make up theories about EA being an evil company instead. But EA is neither some friendly company that only wants to please us nor an evil company who only want to disappoint us and make us angry. Besides that EA isn’t either an incompetent company that only misunderstand our wishes all the time and therefore put a lot of bugs in the game and remove popular things because EA didn’t know that we wanted those things. EA is an extremely competent business company that only makes games to earn as much money as possible. Therefore EA is mainly interested in marketing and in making packs that sell well because they can be advertised efficiently.

So we only fool ourselves if we try to make guesses about the future without realizing this! We have to understand why EA has released a new Sims basegame every 5 years even though simmers always have hoped for more EPs instead and we have to understand why EA even closed a good studio like the one in Salt Lake instead of using it to make all the Sims 4 EPs that simmers here in the forum have wanted so badly since the Sims 4 basegame was released in 2014 - even when it would have been so very easy for EA just to have kept the Salt Lake Studio and let them make those EPs?

So no. I don’t buy the excuses and made up “explanations” about EPs suddenly taking twice as much time to make which then “means” that “TS4 will get new packs for 10 years instead of only 5 years as usual”. EA is a business and it took the decision to ”only” make 1 EP each years from facts about the market instead! So what was those facts? From my studies about such companies I can only guess on the following (and in this case I am also quite sure that my guesses are very close to the truth):
1. EA has carefully considered how many packs it can release each year without sales numbers going down too much for each pack. The result of EA’s considerations are based on market investigations about how much money the average simmer will use on packs each year? (This way of thinking is also taught to all the students in business schools where they learn to see things this way!) So EA has carefully considered this and the result must have been that EA doesn’t think that it would be profitable to release packs that would cost more each year than what they cost now! So when EA now releases all those SPs and GPs then EA has to reduce the number of EPs to avoid releasing more than the average simmer will want to buy!
2. EA has also carefully considered how often a new basegame should be released? The decision about this has never been made at random either. Sure the decisions also never have been based on what simmers in the forums wanted either because they never have wanted a new basegame instead of more packs (unless they hated the game and didn’t play it anymore). So why has EA always released a new basegame after at most 5 years anyway??

The answer to the last question is of course again about marketing! So let us just consider the pros and cons from a marketing viewpoint:
1. It is much cheaper to just make packs than it is to develop and design a whole new basegame. Simmers also prefer more and more packs over a new basegame. So from this viewpoint EA should just release new packs forever!
2. But the problem is that an old basegame doesn’t sell very well to new customers who usually clearly prefer new games over old games. Also some of the simmers who earlier bought all the released packs stop playing the game and therefore don’t buy the new packs. Old packs also need to be offered for a lower price to still sell. But then more and more simmers will buy old discounted packs instead of the new ones. So EA’s income goes down both because the old basegame doesn’t sell well anymore and because the new packs sell worse than the first packs did!

So EA has always had to find a balance between those two points and the result of EA’s considerations has always been to release packs for 5 years but then to release a new basegame to have a much better selling basegame again and to be able to offer a more attractive game to especially new customers such that the sales numbers for the packs also can be higher again! My point therefore just is that I can’t at all imagine any good reason why EA suddenly instead should make a different decision now and decide that it doesn’t matter if sales numbers go down and EA’s income therefore too just to avoid making a new well selling basegame!?!! Can you really imagine such a good reason? Or do you just think that EA shouldn’t make a new basegame because the time for big Sims games soon will be over anyway?

While I agree with just about everything that @Erpe just said, I think that EA actually raising the price of Sims 4 packs is a pretty fair sign that... well, either their packs are selling just fine, or they want to milk one last glut of cash out of us before they close up Sims 4. Apparently the new engine makes Seasons more difficult.

Going by Erpe's argument, raising prices means that packs will be released less frequently - which also means that if the packs remain the same size regardless, they can go on releasing them after they stop making them. I don't want this, but since when did EA listen to what I want?

"Loanet;c-16317386" wrote:
While I agree with just about everything that @Erpe just said, I think that EA actually raising the price of Sims 4 packs is a pretty fair sign that... well, either their packs are selling just fine, or they want to milk one last glut of cash out of us before they close up Sims 4. Apparently the new engine makes Seasons more difficult.

Going by Erpe's argument, raising prices means that packs will be released less frequently - which also means that if the packs remain the same size regardless, they can go on releasing them after they stop making them. I don't want this, but since when did EA listen to what I want?

I think that we should see the raising prices in a bigger perspective. Netflix recently raised its prices too and the game companies seem to do the same for all their games. So I think that EA just reacted to this tendency on the market. Read also the information on http://thefederalist.com/2017/07/13/developers-dlc-video-games-not-expensive-enough/

I am not sure that making Seasons has become more difficult because that sounds quite unlikely to me. Even the Sims Freeplay has all kinds of weather. So weather can’t be that difficult to make. But EA has until now avoided repetions of wellknown EPs like University and Seasons and likely for two reasons:
1. EA doesn’t want people to start taking about: “all the big Sims games being the same! So if you own one of them you should just go on playing it instead of buying slightly changed and very expensive new versions of the same game!”
2. EA decided to replace half of the usually EPs with the new GPs. So TS4 will likely get much fewer EPs than the earlier Sims games got.

"@drake_mccarty;c-16309543" wrote:

"Cheekybits;c-16309529" wrote:
I don't understand why people assume if sims 5 comes out it will be better. If they use the same game engine it will take just as long for packs if they don't it will take just as long to redo animations. Look how long it took them to do toddlers in sims 4, do we really want to wait again.

They always talk about how Sims 4 required an upgrade to their technology base. I just don’t see it. They can’t accomplish anything on this technology.

I would hope the heads at Maxis would immediately shoot down the idea of reusing the Smart Sim engine. It has been the largest road-block for Sims 4.

The engine actually seems to be the most stable and best engine they’ve ever made.

An engine and game are two very seperate things. They’ve chosen to build The Sims 4 the way it is. The limitations are based on the fact they chose to make them in the first place.

They were able to turn The Sims 2, that already used SimCity 4 as it’s world engine into The Sims 3. However there was no way they could add Open World to the Sims 2. Yet they used The Sims 2 engine for TS3. The engine is just a tool kit to make a game.

The only reason they build new engines is when the old ones can’t make proper use of technology. But look at gaming engines like Unreal. The amount of games using that engine is huge.

Also remember, the Sims 2 engine was also used for The Urbz, The Sims 2 console games and even The Sims 3 for console (also Nintendo 3DS), hence why they’re able to copy and paste animations etc freely.

The Sims 3 for 3DS was basically found to be a reskinned Sims 2.

"jackjack_k;c-16317432" wrote:

"@drake_mccarty;c-16309543" wrote:

"Cheekybits;c-16309529" wrote:
I don't understand why people assume if sims 5 comes out it will be better. If they use the same game engine it will take just as long for packs if they don't it will take just as long to redo animations. Look how long it took them to do toddlers in sims 4, do we really want to wait again.

They always talk about how Sims 4 required an upgrade to their technology base. I just don’t see it. They can’t accomplish anything on this technology.

I would hope the heads at Maxis would immediately shoot down the idea of reusing the Smart Sim engine. It has been the largest road-block for Sims 4.

The engine actually seems to be the most stable and best engine they’ve ever made.

An engine and game are two very seperate things. They’ve chosen to build The Sims 4 the way it is. The limitations are based on the fact they chose to make them in the first place.

They were able to turn The Sims 2, that already used SimCity 4 as it’s world engine into The Sims 3. However there was no way they could add Open World to the Sims 2. Yet they used The Sims 2 engine for TS3. The engine is just a tool kit to make a game.

The only reason they build new engines is when the old ones can’t make proper use of technology. But look at gaming engines like Unreal. The amount of games using that engine is huge.

Also remember, the Sims 2 engine was also used for The Urbz, The Sims 2 console games and even The Sims 3 for console (also Nintendo 3DS), hence why they’re able to copy and paste animations etc freely.

The Sims 3 for 3DS was basically found to be a reskinned Sims 2.

I know what I’m talking about Jack. Just because the game is stable doesn’t mean it has a good foundation underneath it.

Yes they are able to do some pretty cool things with flexible game engines, but Sims 4 can barely do anything. Do you think they intentionally design the game to be so vastly inferior? No.. that’s a byproduct of their lack of funding and difficult to work with engine. Go do some research and stop spreading misinformation on the forums.

I hope we get a sims 5 2020 with seasons in base game and baby’s that aren’t objects.

"Sydneysunshine11;c-16318041" wrote:
I hope we get a sims 5 2020 with seasons in base game and baby’s that aren’t objects.

That's asking for too much knowing Maxis over the years. And seeing how Sims 4 has been over the course of 3 years we may not even see babies in the base game of the next installment. They may just pop out of the mother as a child.

"Pancakesandwich;c-16288325" wrote:
Late 2019 or 2020 will be the end of Sims 4. It's probably not going further because that's where making a Sims 5 might become more profitable than developing new packs for this.

This makes a lot more sense than even for this reason. It's about software support policies and product support policies by which a company is bound to legally. When a company no longer develops a product, they are supposed to support it for a number of years afterwards. For tangible goods such as refrigerators, stoves, computer parts, etc., the period is about 5 years. I know this because I worked for some hardware manufacturers for quite some years.

Software, meaning computer programs, the period is a lot shorter because of the nature of the business and how fast things progress. For that the period is about 2 to 4 years. Given that we're already into 2018 and new packs are still being offered, we may see Sims 4 as a product for another couple of years then followed by another two years of full support while Sims 5 fills in and grows beyond that.

2020 or even beyond, Sims 4 feels so incomplete still.

Since they're talking about The Sims future at EA Play or whatever wonder if we will get any words regarding Sims 4's expected life span.