The Sims franchise is moving beyond linear, sequential video game releases, according to franchise svp and general manager Kate Gorman Revelli. Rather than moving toward The Sims 5replacing The Sims 4Electronic Arts and developer Maxis will continue to support The Sims 4expanding the franchise by developing alongside it, not replacing it.
“A lot of the way people play The Sims is about expressing themselves and their creativity and finding their own set of goals to pursue within the game, but what keeps them coming back is their attachment to those little personas that they’ve built,” Gorman Revelli told Polygon. “We also know that we’re not going to adopt a linear model, because we have a lot to offer.” The Sims 4“What we're really looking at is how can we continue to work with our community, with our players, and prevent us from getting to this point where we're going to have to reset all of our progress and lose those amazing memories and characters and things that we've created over those 10 years of gaming, potentially.”
Confused? Until now, most people considered Project René to be… The Sims 5But that is not entirely correct. Project René will exist alongside The Sims 4 and other games as a multiplayer component. “We want to continue to expand it, so if you want to play that kind of multiplayer experience, that’s going to be what you’re looking for in the things we’ve talked about on Project Rene,” he said. The first real look at what to expect there is scheduled for later this year, according to Gorman Revelli, as part of its new experimental testing ground, The Sims Labs.
“Again, it’s a complementary experience to all the others, it’s not a linear experience,” he said. “We’ll see a lot of things in the playtest, but the core piece of what Rene is is that we’re really looking at a way to make The Sims playable together. That’s what we’ll continue to iterate on and learn with the community.”
Gorman Revelli was clear in stating that The Sims will continue to evolve and be updated. In a post on The Sims blog, The Sims 4 It was described as “a fundamental Sims experience” that will continue to be modernized. Will there ever be a game called The Sims 5? The answer seems to be no, but that doesn't mean that The Sims experience won't change or evolve; whatever takes fifth place on the list of top Sims games (René or not!) is No a replacement for The Sims 4 — It is a continuation of that.