Ok, I want to update my situation since my first report is a month old. Unfortunately I seem to not have a USB to send my save file but I’ll keep looking.
For reference, I am a Ps5 player with ALL expansion packs, ALL game packs, ALL stuff packs, and ALL kits. I use testingcheats a lot, and my sim’s world history is also really big (she’s had close to 1000 babies in this world now, among other things). I have been playing with the same sims for like 2 years and my last new save file (which was me making a new save file for the same household, NOT starting a new game) was a couple months ago now. The Ps5 I use is a couple years old now and probably needs to be cleared of dust inside, but I doubt that contributes much if at all. My gaming experience was always a little slow but I didn’t have any crashing issues until around the start of January 2026. I assume it was after a specific update but I could not tell you which one.
At first the crashes were common but not too frequent, I was able to save more times than it crashed, but as the weeks went by (and updates too, probably) the crashes became more common. Through February I was unable to freely save without consistently anticipating a crash, and eventually I started getting lucky if my game managed to save even once.
Jump to the present (since around March) and I am now totally unable to save whether it be through just saving, saving and exiting, saving in build mode (yes, I tried that..), or saving and heading to Manage Worlds. It wont even let me head to Manage Worlds WITHOUT saving, so maybe it’s less of a saving issue and more of a loading issue that saving also uses? I deliberately try to save after doing much fewer things than I used to, gaming for only around 15 minutes, and I get the same outcome. My success rate is at 0% now, I haven’t been able to save in weeks and I try multiple times a week. I don’t know if the following updates that have been released since have worsened the state of the game for console or what.
Fortunately (though I don’t know how fortunate this is cause idk if it means anything), I have noticed some things… the way the save icon moves has always been similar, and the game always seems to crash at the same point in the saving process. It’ll pause most if not all the time a few seconds in after some of the menu options grey out, then it catches up with the menu settings available again, and then it lags a few seconds later before freezing and then crashing. Always at the same point in the save. While this is happening I keep seeing the lights on my lot turning on and off, and sometimes I’ll see furniture and walls disappear and reappear… I’ve already had to pause my game often to let queued actions register themselves and catch up, etc… I’m not sure if the game saves by reloading everything on the lot but if there’s rendering involved it’s really struggling on big lots and should totally be optimised… justice for console players!
I’ve also noticed that in every single attempt at playing and then saving the game, there is a point in time where the game glitches. I could be moving my camera view too fast or idk but it’ll randomly start buffering and replay the last couple of frames on repeat; screen glitches, characters glitch, everything does this. This lasts for about 10ish seconds..? Maybe a little longer..? If this didn’t happen randomly mid gameplay, it’d do it the moment I press “save”. Every single time.
I have tried clearing my cache, I have tried rebuilding the database, and I’ve tried reinstalling the game. When I cleared cache or rebuilt database (forgot which one), the game was as smooth as ever for a short while before eventually returning to its awful state. Reinstalling did absolutely nothing.
I’m heavily debating leaving the sims, which would be a shame since I’ve spent so much money on this game. If this keeps happening and console players are kept as second priority then idk if I’ll keep an interest in this game. Pc players need focus on mod compatibility, and console players need performance optimisation BADLY (and/or whatever is creating the crashes). Since the marketplace is out now, let the makers make new content. Please focus on the crashes and other save/data issues! We so need a console-heavy update…
ADD-ON: I was just testing to verify crashes occurring when you save immediately after loading in, and although it still showed the buffering the game wanted to ragebait me and save successfully the one time I didn’t need it… I pressed save again to make sure it wasn’t a fluke and it saved again.. Maybe the strat is that you just need to believe that the game will crash and it’ll be fine just to spite you… I bet if I play the game for a bit and try to save again it’ll crash this time… I haven’t yet changed the speed of the gameplay, I don’t want to touch anything 😩
EDIT: Played for a little longer and I started seeing the signs.. the signsss… the reduced smoothness… the lags and the stuttering during gameplay.. the stuttering while saving.. it crashed. Maybe the game doesn’t like when there’s too much new stuff to render and save? Does it store gameplay somewhere ready for when you want to save?
