Comments on: EA Earnings Call: “The Sims 4 Drove Solid Revenues”

By: Matty Smith

Matty Smith — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 06:45:00 +0000

I’m not shocked, but I find this a bit upsetting, given how horribly lacklustre and chore-like the game appears even after an EP and some minor packs. It’s hard for me to judge, though, but the reviews of Get to Work made it sound extremely weak. It’s no comfort that literally nobody I know owns TS4, I suppose it has found its own new, more expansive market. Nothing wrong with that, but it leaves those of us wanting a fuller experience out in the cold. I rarely visit, and just decide to pop by once a month or two to see what was in the news. I suppose I live in a vain hope of some bizarrely earth-shattering change to the game as it stands. I’m still sad not to be a simmer any longer. Hope all are well.

– Kiwi_tea

By: Babbling Butterfly

Babbling Butterfly — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 09:32:00 +0000

That wasn’t so much an opinion. In my honest opinion, we wouldn’t even need another Sims title. With Sims 4 they have created a Sims title that is using a graphics style that won’t age nearly as fast as the previous games and the engine is the perfect foundation for the future.
So if it were up to me, I would just continue uptimizing the Sims 4 base while pumping out expansions and DLC for as long as people are buying them.

But that’s not how the Sims series works. As for Sims 5 combining Elements of all 4 games, that won’t happen either. For one, you simply can’t put the content of all previous expansions in a single game. They took 15 years developing all that stuff! If they were going to take the time to do it all again, we really would need a Reboot, because then we wouldn’t see another Sims title for at least 10 years after Sims 4 is done.

The thing is, the developers have to make certain decisions when creating a base game. Those decisions will never appeal to everyone. But they are necessary.

Now the open world, the devs knew it was a mistake, probably even before Sims 3 launched, judging by how they delayed the release by several months just a couple of weeks before it was originally planned. Same for CASt. Broken from the start. Could they fix those problems and bring the features back? Sure! But not in the near future. Because they have to create a game that will run on any kind of computer.
Unlike most other studios, Maxis knows that many of their players are using slower machines and won’t want to or won’t be able to upgrade those, just to play a game. And there is the problem. A well working open world just is not possible without making the next Sims title exclusive to Sims players with a good enough PC. And yes, I’m saying PC here, because you can bet that no Mac out there would be able to handle such a game! And we all have seen the outcry when Sims 4 came out for Mac 6 months later, even though that is a relatively average Mac delay that is used for most game releases.

By: Kali Yamarik

Kali Yamarik — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 01:40:00 +0000

I would only say i missed the open world if it ever actually worked. Even the developers knew that the Sims 3 was full of ghost towns. the idea was great on paper but in practice, it never added any life to the game and only really slowed it down. Even they said part of the reason they went without the open world for sims 4 was that it was never populated in sims 3. Which really defeats the purpose. The sims 2 will always be the best in the series and i think they made a very wise decision going back to lively, closed lots that actually feel like whatever venue they are supposed to be instead of having 3 or 4 sims at them. And that was alot of the reason loading screens got to be 30-45 minutes long eventually if you played for a while on the same save. The open world wasn’t all it was cut out to be. And people just kept saying “so then fix it” But clearly it isn’t that easy.

By: Dre Darrell

Dre Darrell — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 00:32:00 +0000

I respect your opinion on the game. You misunderstood what I mean in regards to “reboot” what I meant was for the game to combine all the elements of what made each series of the franchise fun from 1-4. They need to have Sims 5 as an open world again and all of the contents from each game, expansion packs for the most part (like weather etc.) and what have you implemented to impress the consumers otherwise if they do a 5 one day and leave everything out of it again than in a way its like alienating the people who are keeping your company up-float.

I agree with you Sims 5 will happen after all EA knows they are set for a long time when it comes to the Sims series despite the backlashes people are going to pay for the game, as I have because I love the series so much but I just think that strategically they need appeal to what we as players want as much as possible.

I do enjoy Sims 4 for the most part but i just miss the open world aspect of it.

By: Babbling Butterfly

Babbling Butterfly — Sun, 02 Aug 2015 08:54:00 +0000

You can’t reboot the Sims series. A reboot is meant to reset everything that came before and make a fresh start. But that can only be done when there is either a story involved or there haven’t been any new parts of a franchise in a long time. The latter is why they rebooted SimCity. The first is why they rebooted Tomb Raider. Neither apply to the Sims series.
Sims 4 might have caused a bachlash, but mind you, so did Sims 2 when it released without all the content of the original title’s expansions.
This conference call confirmed that Sims 4 is now at a point where it is exceeding EA’s expectations. EA’s expectations are never a low bar you can simply hop over!

Sims 5 was always going to happen! This just made it even more obvious. The Sims series, to this day, is the strongest selling PC-franchise in history. It can’t just be toppled over by some people who didn’t like what one game had to offer at release. Especially when that game apparently is selling strong by now.

By: Dre Darrell

Dre Darrell — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 23:31:00 +0000

A Sims 5 is highly unlikely, maybe a reboot of the game itself will be a better option after the major backlash Sims 4 had when it came out because of the missing content.

By: Dre Darrell

Dre Darrell — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 23:30:00 +0000

Good for EA no surprise by their numbers really, but as an avid Sims player since 2000. This game still just doesn’t compare to the other installments. Hands down Sims 2 will always be the better version in this entire franchise no matter how much money Sims 4 made or continues to make.

By: Awesomemarc

Awesomemarc — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 21:52:00 +0000

The thing is we all complained about TS3 and its many shortcomings, yet little to nothing was done to fix that game’s boatload of problems, so I wouldn’t attribute TS4’s improvements to customer complaints exclusively.

By: Babbling Butterfly

Babbling Butterfly — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 17:35:00 +0000

No, you understood that wrong. Of course Sims 3 was successful. Only an idiot would think otherwise. As you correctly said, every sequel, no matter the franchise, will always get a boost in release sales, depending on how well liked the previous game(s) were.
And that is where you missed my point. I didn’t want to say that you can judge the success of a game by the sales of its sequel, thus meaning Sims 3 wasn’t well liked because Sims 4 started out slow. No! I wanted so say that you can not judge how well liked a game itself is doing by the sales it makes at release. Because release sales will always account to its predecessors, the marketing before release and only partially the game itself.

Going by that, the sales of a typical sequel start out very strong and then slowly (in the case of the Sims franchise very very very slowly) die out, with little bumps that drive sales a little higher again every time a well received DLC or expansion is released.
For Sims 2 and Sims 3 this was true. For Sims 4 it wasn’t. Sims 4 starting out slow and now selling strong, after its release is already in the past, means that the game has proven itself over time, which is something you would usually only expect from the first game in a series.

A sequel managing that is a big achievement. So no, I didn’t want to make any judgement about any other games in the series, but exclusively about Sims 4 and the way it started selling strong in a time when pre-release hype, marketing and previous titles don’t matter much for the sales any longer.
Sims 4 managed to build up the consumers’ confidence on its own. That was my, or actually rather Luis’, point.

By: peno

peno — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 17:00:00 +0000

You are quite contradicting here. First you say Sims 3 was only successful, because Sims 2 was successful, only to write that Sims 4 was successful on its own, not because Sims 3 was successful (and it was, like it or not) and because it is part of otherwise successful The Sims merchandise, because there are people, who would buy anything that has The Sims brand on its cover, no matter the real quality?