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Many Sims fans are looking forward to The Sims 5, the fifth installment of the successful simulation game The Sims. The Sims 4 is the latest installment of the popular life simulator and was released on the 2nd of September 2014. However, we all know that this game is coming to an end. Considering that each Sims generation lasts for about 4 or 5 years, it could mean that the fifth generation will arrive quite soon already! In this article, we will talk about the possible release date.

The Sims 5 won’t happen if The Sims 4 fails

But first of all: will there be a The Sims 5 game at all? Grant Rodiek, a producer on The Sims 4, said – back in 2014, right after The Sims 4 came out – that the release of the fifth generation all depends on the success of the fourth generation. If that game fails to succeed in terms of sales, there won’t be a The Sims 5 game at all.

“We’re not working on Sims 5. We’re not thinking about Sims 5. If Sims 4 isn’t successful, there won’t be a Sims 5.” – Grant Rodiek

This statement resulted in a lot of anger, disappointment, and sadness in the Sims community.

Is The Sims 4 successful or not?

Grant Rodiek’s statement raises the question whether The Sims 4 is a successful game or not. There have been many discussions on this topic online, especially on the official The Sims forums. One of them is called “The Sims 4 is still a success”. Some other topics highlight the opposite, like “Is this enough proof that The Sims 4 is a flop?”. Both topics are a few years old by now, but the discussion about the success of this game continues.

Popular game news site Kotaku published an article (without a clear source for this claim and without any numbers to support this claim) in 2015 where it was claimed that:

“Neither SimCity nor the recent release of The Sims 4 performed very well, according to a person familiar with goings-on at the studio.”

Electronic Arts, on the other hand, doesn’t reveal any sales numbers publicly. Some fans are worried about the franchise because of ongoing rumors online. This resulted in many forum discussions on the official The Sims forum: “The Sims 4 has sold over 5 million copies”, “The Sims 4 has already sold 5 million copies” and “The Sims 4 sales figures”.

Supposedly, 5 million The Sims 4 copies have been sold, which has been widely discussed in these forum topics.

Based on these forum discussions, it is difficult to say whether The Sims 4 is a successful game or not. ESA, which reports about sales of PC games sales, has listed the game twice as the top selling game in 2014 (which was also highlighted by popular game news site GameSpot) and in 2015. Furthermore, famous site Digital Spy showed that in September 2014, right after The Sims 4 came out, it became the first PC game to reach the top of the Chart Track chart since 2012. This shows, to a certain extent, that the game actually is a successful based on sales. However, no numbers are included and digital downloads are not included either.

Some unreliable sources – which have been mentioned a lot in forum discussions – claim different sale numbers. VGChartz, for example, shows 3,6 million sales as of September 2017. However, this number doesn’t include digital downloads, which makes it unreliable. Another source, Wikipedia, shows that the game has sold 5 million copies. It is not clear whether downloads are included in this number or not. Moreover, Wikipedia uses a rather vague Twitter discussion by SimScraper and SimGuruNinja as the source for these numbers. Wikipedia also mentions that their sales list can never be seen as complete.

Another producer on The Sims 4, Lyndsay Pearson, joined the discussion on sales numbers. She said in the Brazilian tv show GloboSat the following:

“Yeah, it’s definitely more than that! We don’t really track specific numbers but there are millions of players who are playing The Sims 4.” – Lyndsay Pearson

In May 2017 Electronic Arts announced its quarterly financial results, showing that the monthly active users of The Sims 4 increased by 33% in the fourth quarter of 2017’s fiscal year, which is the period between January and April 2017. Forbes wrote about this too. These numbers show solid growth.

So when is The Sims 5 coming?

If we’re looking at the release pattern of earlier Sims generations, it is clearly noticeable that each generation lasts between 4 years and 7 months and 5 years and 3 months total. We at DownloadSims5.com made a simple calculation. If we look at the months between each generation (55 months between The Sims and The Sims 2, 56 months between The Sims 2 and The Sims 3, and 63 months between The Sims 3 and The Sims 4) and calculate the average duration of each generation, the average lifespan becomes 58 months. The Sims 4 came out on the 2nd of September 2014. Adding 58 months to this could mean that The Sims 5 will be released in July 2019.

However, it doesn’t seem likely that Electronic Arts and Maxis will release The Sims 5 in the middle of the summer. Based on our overview, it is clearly visible that most Sims games were right launched before or after summer.

It seems very likely that the fifth generation will be launched somewhere between June and September 2019. We’re expecting at least a digital download version of the game and perhaps a physical version too.

We’ll just have to wait until Electronic Arts and Maxis officially announce the game! We do think that The Sims 5 is in the works. Developing a game takes a long time! We can’t wait for the official announcement!

We will update this website as soon as we know more details.

What do you think: When will The Sims 5 be released?

Now we’re curious: When do you think The Sims 5 will come out? Will it be 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, or perhaps even later? Let us know your thoughts by voting below!

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