EA has announced plans to go “beyond linear, sequential releases of The Sims” that will see it forgo a direct “replacement” for The Sims 4 – i.e., a The Sims 5 – in favor of a new approach that allows players to carry over their progress between titles and “truly [have] “a continuous experience.”
“This means we'll continue to deliver the HD simulation experience and what people expect from a 5,” Gorman continued, “but it doesn't mean we're starting over… As we think about the future, we want all of those families and generations to continue. Those creations are their progress, their attachment. We don't want to reset their progress. So it's not so much about the numbers in the games, but knowing that the future of the franchise is more about maintaining its progress, maintaining things across all of the titles, and really having a continuous experience, and not a start-and-stop experience between products.”
And while The Sims 4, now ten years old, will remain “a foundational Sims experience, receiving new expansions, updates, fixes, and 'modernization,'” EA says it's also focused on creating games and experiences that “touch on different categories across the simulated life genre, including cozy games, social games, and collaborative games.” [and] narrative-driven mobile games. Notably, Project Rene, the “next-gen Sims game and creative platform” that EA originally announced in 2022, is also still in development.
In addition to the promise of “significant new features and updates to the base game” for The Sims 4, along with ongoing quality control and game optimization efforts, EA has announced new The Sims 4 Creation Kits and confirmed the previously rumored The Sims Movie. Creation Kits, as the name implies, are new downloadable content designed and created by community creators that will then be published by EA, with the first ones set to arrive in November 2024.
Before all that, though, The Sims 4’s release schedule continues this Thursday, September 19, with the launch of its Artist Studio and Storybook Nursery Kits DLC, while the still-mysterious Life and Death Expansion Pack arrives on October 31. Additionally, EA previously confirmed that MySims and MySims Kingdom will be releasing for Switch as a two-game bundle on November 19.