Why are they rebranding ?

"Sindocat;c-17160399" wrote:
It's simple. In previous iterations of The Sims, the packaging changed after about five years because they were changing the game: The Sims to TS2, TS2 to TS3, and so on.

This game is five years old, but there are no plans to abandon this version any time soon. TS5 is no more than speculation, and maybe, possibly, in some sort of rought pre-concept planning stage.

But TS4 is in fact more robust and popular than The Sims ever has been and, as a way to keep the visual profile fresh and contemporary, rather than stale or dated, Maxis is doing what companies do, and having its design team put together a sleeker, more contemporary presentation.

This is a standard business practice. Design teams do this kind of work routinely. Re-styling an existing, established brand is probably more common than establishing a new one.

The Sims is an astonishingly successful video game franchise, with nearly twenty years' prominence in the industry. It is worth their time to make it look like a current game - which it is.

None of this means they are not also working to resolve bugs and performance issues, because of course they are. They are explicitly not ending development of new content and playability. All of that is still going on. All the more reason to keep the packaging current. It's standard business practice.

Lol (bold) ;) No it’s not but EA doesn’t care, that much is true. It is logical they change the looks for a bit (they’ve done that for the earlier versions as well actually). I don’t think it’s that what people mind about. They mind it looks like it’s a game for five year olds now and I think there’s a reason it looks like a game meant for five year olds. They are more and more targeting kids and young teens. And not everybody likes that. This just makes people realize that.