Today’s Behind The Sims Summit live stream just took place, and some interesting things happened! There was a lot of anticipation for this Summit, because of speculations that The Sims 5 was going to be announced.
So was The Sims 5 actually announced?
Did they announce The Sims 5 after all? That’s the million dollar (or Simoleon) question. The answer is most likely yes!
During the live stream, Lyndsay Pearson (VP of Franchise Creative for The Sims) talked about the future of The Sims. She shared some very interesting details about “Project Rene” (Rene stands for Renewal). Project Rene is probably the working title for The Sims 5, just like Project Olympus became The Sims 4 once it was released.
So, it definitely looks like The Sims 5 is on its way! However, Lyndsay mentioned it would take a few years to develop the next iteration even further. How many years, you may wonder? That’s still unclear.
The Sims 4 will be 10 years old in about 2 years, which is twice as long as most of the older Sims generations, so we assume that the game will be coming within 2 years.
What can we expect from The Sims 5?
So, what’s new about The Sims 5? Not much has been confirmed, but a few remarkable details were shared during the live stream.
Lyndsay Pearson emphasized that the innovations that were shown during the stream were based on “very early” developments, so it’s definitely not the final game.
This is what we already know about the fifth generation:
The game will definitely include multiplayer aspects, as it introduces online elements. It looks like there will also be a single-player option, so you can also play all by yourself.
The game can be played on several devices simultaneously. You can play it on a computer and a smartphone at the same time. It’s not confirmed which exact devices will be supported.
Within the game, it’s possible to decorate rooms and share items (objects and probably more things) with other players.
There will be a color wheel and it’s possible to select patterns when furnishing rooms or constructing houses.
It’s also possible to reshape objects and other items. You can, for example, make a bed wider, add pillows to a couch and rotate them.
Rewatch the Behind The Sims Summit about Project Rene
Watch the full Summit back below. The interesting part about Project Rene (The Sims 5) starts at 26:45.
Lyndsay mentioned that more details about Project Rene will be shared in the upcoming years. This will include in-progress work, explorations, sneak peeks, and behind-the-scenes content.
We’re super excited for the next generation of The Sims. We hope you are feeling the same as well!
Now you’re probably wondering: What on earth does this mean?
Well, it shows that it’s likely that Electronic Arts is planning on launching an official website for The Sims 5, just like they did with earlier generations. It also suggests that they are working on the next generation for real! That’s some exciting news, right?
We’ve also compared the registration details for TheSims4.com, and it shows the exact same details. It’s owned by Electronic Arts Inc. with its headquarters in Redwood City, California.
At the moment, there is no official release date information yet, but we’ll let you know when we know more!
Our colleagues over at Sims Community recently discovered a new interview with Electronic Arts’ CEO, Andrew Wilson, who confirmed that EA is actually planning on releasing the next generation Sims game. Nothing more has been confirmed yet, but it is very likely that EA’s CEO Andrew is referring to The Sims 5!
And just to be clear: this is official information, not fake news!
During the Third Quarter of FY2020 earnings call, Andrew Wilson was asked if Maxis is planning on relaunching an online version of The Sims (comparable to The Sims Online, which was released in 2002 and was shut down in 2008). Andrew’s response to this question was rather interesting as he mentioned that “Maxis is continuously thinking about The Sims for a new generation and that features from The Sims Online will become a part of that experience ‘in the years to come’.”
Andrew also said that “although they will always stay true to creation, escape, motivations and more (hinting at some of the keywords of an offline game), that they are also about to embrace a new social experience such as social interactions and competitions (which were part of The Sims Online as well) in a Sims experience in the years to come.” This quote shows that EA and Maxis are seriously looking at adding multiplayer and single-player elements to the fifth generation.
Here is the full transcript of the interview with EA’s CEO. The video with the interview can be found below the transcript!
Question: Any thoughts on relaunching an online version of the franchise given its large popularity? (which is a reference to The Sims Online)
Andrew Wilson (EA’s CEO): Great question on The Sims! The Sims will be 20 next week. That Maxis team and the team that’s been a part of Maxis over the years continue to deliver unbelievably innovative and creative content for a constantly growing Sims community globally. As we think about The Sims – again, I reference the motivations of why we play the games – inspiration, escape, social interaction, creation, self-improvement, competition. Typically what The Sims has done is really focus on fulfilling the motivations and inspiration, escape, creation, self-improvement and not necessarily focus as much as on social interaction and competition.
But a few things are in fact true over the years. One is that the Sims community continues to grow and with the broad of social platforms continue to connect with each other and share what they do – in and around the game they play. And we’ve seen that manifest in games like The Sims FreePlay, which was a more social experience for us. And we’re also seeing that the competition nature of The Sims is also rising and we’re seeing people compare and contrast. Not competition in an original sports sense, but how they create, and what they create, and how they use their imaginations, and what they’re able to build inside of these Sims universes.
As Maxis continues to think about The Sims for a new generation – across platforms and a cloud-enabled world, you should imagine while we will always stay true to our inspiration, escape, creation, self-improvement, motivations – that this notion of social interactions and competition like the kind of things that were actually present in The Sims Online many, many years ago – that they will start to become part of ongoing Sims experience in the years to come.
We are very excited. This is a game that really doesn’t have any competition in its category for delivering and fulfilling these motivations for players, and we think of the tremendous growth opportunities for us for many, many years to come.
Are you excited about The Sims 5? We hope so! Keep an eye out on our website for more news, and don’t forget to sign up for the first-ever Sims 5 newsletter.
Many people have been discussing the release date for The Sims 5 lately. The Sims 4 was released a few years ago, which means that The Sims 5 might arrive quite soon already! But when?
What do you think? Will it be 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 or later? Check out our first poll below and vote now!
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.”
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.
Generation
Release date
Days between generations
Months between generations
The Sims
4th Feb 2000
The Sims 2
14th Sep 2004
1684 (between The Sims 1 and 2)
55 months
The Sims 3
2nd Jun 2009
1722 (between The Sims 2 and 3)
56 months
The Sims 4
2nd Sep 2014
1918 (between The Sims 3 and 4)
63 months
The Sims 5
2nd Jul 2019* (estimated release date)
1764* (estimated days between The Sims 4 and 5)
58 months* (estimated months between The Sims 4 and 5)
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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