Sul sul Simmers. We have some exciting news for you today! During today’s Behind The Sims livestream, Lyndsay Pearson (Vice President of Franchise Creative for The Sims at Maxis) revealed some more details about Project Rene. Project Rene is the working title for The Sims 5.
Pearson confirmed that The Sims 5’s base game will be free to download as soon as it’s officially available! Exciting news, right!?
Besides that, Pearson also confirmed that the game can be played without a subscription.
Pearson shared more information about expansion packs as well. She mentioned that The Sims 5 will be getting content packs and expansion packs. These add-ons can be purchased to expand the gameplay. That probably means that the fifth generation’s core game will have limited gameplay and features.
At the moment, it’s not really clear what these expansions will look like. There may be an option for buying extra gameplay, features, and items through microtransactions, but that’s not confirmed yet.
So, when is The Sims 5 coming? The honest answer is that the release date has not been confirmed yet. However, we do know that it’s not coming very soon. It will most likely take another year.
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.
