I keep reading about The Sims 5. Has EA / Maxis ever said that they're working on a new game, or confirmed that they have plans to? I'm not saying that they haven't, just that I haven't seen it.
Anyway, I'm not sure about a next iteration. I picked up TS1 fairly early in its life, and got lots of enjoyment out of it. TS2 improved that in a number of ways, and I got many times my money back in enjoyment from it as well. TS3, for me, was the high point of the series, with its open world, and so many activities that I still haven't tried them all. It was also the first sign that they were going to need to completely re-think their approach to engine design, because it was a bug fest. The game was playable for me long term only because of the almost heroic efforts of one modder in particular. But I loved, and still love, the game.
I only picked up TS4 this year, when nearly every pack was on sale for half price or better. Originally I never intended to buy it, because many of the things I loved from TS3 weren't in it, and were never going to be in it. But the sale was a good deal, and the game had matured quite a bit over the years. I've had fun with it, and again, definitely got my money's worth from it. I still enjoy it, and the ability of the sims to at least somewhat multi-task makes it hard for me to go back to the TS3 for very long. I seem to have hit the optimal point, where bugs in the existing gameplay had been mostly minimized, and before the massive new bugs introduced a couple of months ago (I'm intentionally playing with an outdated version, so I can avoid those bugs).
So, I've gone from a quick adopter of TS1, TS2, and TS3, to needing nearly 6 years before I purchased TS4. I can't imagine what would make me purchase TS5 much quicker than that, unless Maxis completely changes its production model to include most of the usual expansion pack stuff in the base game. I can't imagine them doing so. Thus, I figure that when / if there's ever a TS5, I'm probably five or six years from that point before purchasing it.
