On Tuesday, Electronic Arts and Maxis hosted a special Behind The Sims Summit webcast to commemorate 22 years of the popular life simulation game and provide a glimpse into the future of the franchise.
Most significantly, the base game of The Sims 4 is now available for free download on PC (Steam) and Origin (Origin Access) for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox One. The developers behind The Sims will keep the main game exciting with regular updates and new content drops for The Sims Delivery Express.
Everything announced at the Behind The Sims Summit may be found below.
Sims 5?
During the broadcast, the developers of The Sims 4 revealed Project Rene, a very early glimpse at The Sims 5. Since this is an early glimpse at Project Rene, and since The Sims 5 wasn’t clearly addressed, the final product is likely to look very different.
During the broadcast, viewers saw the new and improved system for building and purchasing. The level of customisation shown in the demo appeared to be very high. The updated user interface featured a customizable bed’s base as well as footboard in place of a standard pre-made bed. In addition to samples of colors and templates, the demo included a color wheel and patterns.
The demo showed separate, movable pillows for each piece of furniture, and what appeared to be the ability to rearrange the layout of a room without utilizing a grid or any sort of hacks. The new interface that has been teased resembles an interior design program, which would significantly improve the game’s realism. As an added bonus, the team demonstrated their efforts testing cross-platform play and a new library sharing functionality.
DLCs
The Sims 4 team also announced that the game’s base game will be made available for free, and that more DLC would be made available for purchase. We saw sketches for bright new worlds, old-fashioned structures with modern twists, intricate clutter, and cutting-edge clothing.
There were no title announcements, however the stream concluded with a teaser showing off some newborn Sims. A baby in a diaper could be seen in the video clip crawling around the living room while making lots of noise. The infant paused, sneezed sweetly, rolled over onto its back, and was carried up by an older Sim.
More engaging baby-related gameplay in The Sims appears to be hinted at by this little animation. The infant shown off on the livestream is more advanced than anything players of The Sims can play with right now, regardless of whether or not a dedicated expansion pack is released.
A new update for both The Sims FreePlay and The Sims Mobile was revealed during the stream by the Maxis development team.
There will be a free update in The Sims FreePlay that will improve the look of Sims in all age groups, from toddlers to retirees. Different men’s and women’s hairstyles and adornments will also be updated with this release. In 2023, players will be able to construct and inhabit their own own super yachts, and this year’s annual Christmas quest will have a brand-new story. In addition, this holiday season, The Sims Mobile’s build-and-buy catalog will expand to include balconies.
If you have the correct mod or custom content, you can spice up otherwise boring gameplay. A new, secure place for Simmers to download mods and custom material was unveiled by The Sims 4 team in conjunction with Overwolf, operators of CurseForge, a mod manager and discovery site for user-generated content. This drastically reduces the possibility of unknowingly downloading malware by clicking on a suspicious link. Later this year, a new hub for mods and user-generated material will go live, but it’s anyone’s guess which mods will be included.
