Summary
When it comes to life-simulation games, none does it better than the OG. For 23 years,The Simshas been the definitive series forlife-simulation gameplay, with each entry offering more advanced mechanics and features than the last, culminating inThe Sims 4, a game that offers just about everything fans could want in a life-sim title. And with the addition of DLC,The Sims 4has truly become the ultimate life-sim experience, one thatThe Sims 5is going to have a tough time competing against.
Currentlycodenamed Project Rene,The Sims 5is officially in the works at EA, and that’s about all that fans know right now. Only confirmed back in October of last year,The Sims 5is probably quite a way out still, but when it does finally appear, it’s going to face a pretty unique challenge. With fans dropping a lot of cash onThe Sims 4over the last decade, trying to get them to move over toThe Sims 5is going to be one difficult task.
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EA Will Have a Hard Time Convincing Fans to Jump From Sims 4 to Sims 5
The Simsfranchise has always followed the same general formula, but that formula has been tweaked in some pretty significant ways over the years. Debuting in 2000,the firstSimsgamewas a phenomenon, and it only made sense for its creators to continue working on it, resulting in the game receiving a handful of expansions, each one adding new features and mechanics. The finalSimsexpansion pack dropped in 2003, just one year beforeThe Sims 2would launch.
The rest ofThe Simsfranchisehas followed this pattern, with each entry getting a set of expansion packs post-launch, and then a new entry coming along a few years later to repeat the cycle. But while players lose access to these expansions between every entry, it’s always been a reasonable trade-off as the sequels have been genuine improvements, adding a slew of new features, quality-of-life upgrades, and vastly improved graphics and presentation. But the leap betweenSimsentries isn’t all that great anymore, andSims 5might not be worth that jump for some fans.
Right now,The Sims 4currently has 68 separate pieces of DLC. While some of these are small furniture packs, some are fully-fledged expansions that add a ton of new features to the game. For hardcoreSimsfans, it’s more than possible that they’ve spent well over a thousand dollars onSims 4DLC over the last 9 years. And ifThe Sims 5repeats the usual series pattern, none of that DLC is going to carry over to the upcoming sequel, but unlike the rest of the series,The Sims 5might not be worth the monumental trade-off this time round.
ButThe Sims 5potentially has one big saving grace up its sleeve, and that’s its possible free-to-play model. Though nothing has been officially confirmed, all signs are pointing toThe Sims 5going free-to-play, withThe Sims 4testing the waters back in October 2022 by going free-to-play itself. So, while players probably won’t be able to carry over any of their DLC toThe Sims 5, they also probably won’t need to drop any cash on the game right away, meaning that the risk of jumping ship isn’t all that high. And even if players don’t end up sticking around, those numbers will still count forThe Sims 5, which is likely what EA is mostly concerned with anyway.
The Sims 5is in development.
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