EA: "If The Sims 4 Isn't Successful, There Won't be a Sims 5"

[Rozalia1]

Allow me to translate for those who have difficulty understanding EA promos:

EA: It's time to get rid o' the trash, the garbage, the worthless piece of crap out here, and we started with John Riccitiello. Yeah, we're gettin' very real around here. We are so, real, it's unbelievable. Because, if you don't get over like I said, you're fired. If you don't draw number, if you don't entertain, if you don't put asses in seats, if you don't put the coinage in the piggy bank, you're fired. No more games. No more, "Kayfabe." "It's a work." "I've won 34 game awards." Who gives a damn, how many... fake awards you won!? If you don't draw money, you get fired around here. If you don't put asses in seats, you?re gone.

 

[fix-the-spade]

So how many franchises does EA kill off before EA realizes that creating EA Origin was a bad idea?

This has nothing to do with Origin.

Battlefield 3 managed to sell well over ten million PC units and every one of them goes through Origin, so if the product is good enough people will use it just like they put up with Steam and Uplay.

Trouble is EA aren't making the products. They're stripping out everything but the absolute bare essentials and putting in every possible 'encouragement' they can for micro transactions on full price games.

Whether it's Battlefield 4, Simcity, Dead Space 3, Need for Speed, Titanfall or now Sims 4 you can look at all those products and see where they had the base of a really fantastic game, then once they had enough for a trailer and a feature list they start cutting it up for the DLC packs.

I'm assuming now that when EA are at the very planning stages of a game they plan which bits they can sell separately just as carefully as the base mechanics, if not more so. It's having the effect of killing titles as fast as EA can que them up, but apparently EA must be making some money from it because they keep trying.

Speaking of BF4, it's still fll of bugs and only half balanced, but yell at me that I can buy ten Battlepacks for £9 (about $15) at every opportunity, or it would do if I hadn't stopped playing once those messages appeared on my account.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

So EA make a extremely bad sequel and than takes the whole Nintendo-level money printing franchises as a hostage? Gee, color me surprised and skeptical.
They are using the "hostage" to get more money and then they will make Sims 5 right after the finish the 10th 60 euro expansion pack and 100th 10 euro DLC because the game will be successful no matter how you look at it. They are just trying to get more from people who like the franchise but don't want to give EA money for this pile of shit they shat.


But in the small chance they actually will cancel Sims 5 if Sims 4 isn't successful, I would say great. I would rather have the franchise dead and in somewhat nice memory than to see its butchered corps dragged more than 4.

Here's a thought: There's obviously a pretty big market for life sims considering The Sims success as a franchise. That isn't likely to go away just because EA decides to takes its toys and go home. So let's say that no more Sims games get made. Sounds like a good opportunity for another developer to me.

I always wondered why The Sims had no real competition anyway...

This. So much of this!

Why is there no Sims competition? There are so many publisher, I don't see why no one tried to take a part of the cake. We had Singles 1 and 2, but those two games revolved around the gimmick of uncensored nudity that it completely missed what made Sims so loved. No character creation, extremely limited house building, even more limited interaction between people...

Sims didn't have any competition at all yet prints money. On the other hand we have CoD which prints money and everyone and their mother wants a piece of the cake. I wish the publisher would get their heads out of their asses and actually think before they make decisions.

 

[AstaresPanda]

LOL. So threats now EA ? right after you wanting to not be voted the worst in America lol So bring out a game take out a bunch of content EVERYONE KNOWS should been in as standard as it has been for the last 3 games, everyone knows your going to rip us all off for DLC. I mean everyone knew the Sims was bad for endless expanion packs but ffs EA.......

 

[sorsa]

Yeah I also read it as "Buy this one or bunny gets a bullet in the head".

Mirror mirror on the wall, how can I be the greatest asshole of them all.

 

[TKretts3]

Doesn't it go without saying that if a game/movie/book isn't successful that there won't be a follow-up in the near future?

 

[masticina]

Does this means that if it doesn't sells to everybody right now living from 1 week old to over 100 year old in the western countries it will be seen as a failure?
Or do they also require the whole of Asia and Africa added to make it actually a "success"

Where did they put the success or failure boundary this time.
Wait I have a better idea make sure also aliens are required to buy it...

 

[twm1709]

There is a "Beyond Good and Evil 2" joke here somewhere....

 

[Verlander]

I would imagine that DLC would be a more profitable direction for them now, particularly if it comes with a strong advertising campaign.

 

[Scrythe]

I read that headline as "If people aren't willing to drop hundreds of dollars on the 40 expansion packs we release for this title, it'll be the last."

Did anyone else find it strange that Sims 3 utilized a combination of physical and digital DLC? I don't mean that in the sense of how Borderlands 2 sold all of it's DLC as an optional, separate disc, but that the 'expansion packs' that could have easily been sold as digital downloads were on discs, while the digital stuff was all microtransaction garbage.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

So they make a terrible game, and it doesn't sell well. They threaten that if it doesn't sell well, they won't make Sims 5. Based off how bad 4 appears to be, would 5 be worth it?

 

[prowll]

EA guilting the fans to get them to buy a watered-down version of their beloved franchise?
What a surprise.

I read it differently. To me it wasn't the same as Frank Gibeau the executive saying "5 mil or gtfo." This is the developer saying "We have to make this good so that you'll buy it. Otherwise they won't ask us to make another one."

Is this EA's way of saying they are actually going to be listening to their playerbase?

That's the way I took it.

If the game that is designed to milk customers with a million small content DLCs doesn't sell well, they'll stop the series because they can't figure out how do it differently. Thanks for looking out for the customers EA! Great job.

Wait you lost me.

Totally agree. I don't see this as 'holding the gamer base hostage', I see this as a completely reasonable business reaction. If the game is bad, so bad that the gamer base does not buy it, why on god's green earth would they put MORE time and energy and resources into something that lost money for them, instead of a different game or franchise that will make money and people enjoy?

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

Basically what I got from this is that EA knows people are unhappy with the game, so in attempt to sell more copies they're blackmailing the consumers by saying "if you don't buy this one you're not getting another one.

 

[Blachman201_v1legacy]

They are seriously resorting to outright threats, blackmail, and ransoming of theoretical future instalments of series now?

EA's ability to constantly set new standards in contempt towards costumers is bordering on being some sort of weird bizarro talent at this point.

 

[AT God]

EA are known to be liars when it comes to ultimatums about the fates of franchises and I think the only way there wouldn't be a Sims 5 would be for Sims 4 to be some earth-shattering failure, like a score of 10 on Metacritic or if game sales were under 100k within the first month or two, which I believe the preorders made impossible. However, I do think if Sims 4 doesn't meet their usually unreasonable expectations, they might put sequential Sims games on ice for a while, probably build the largest DLC library in Sims history for Sims 4 and then after a few years, when the game goes down in price and people start to buy bundles of game and DLC for a reasonable price, they will be able to argue that it was successful in the long run and will eventually fart out a Sims 5.

However, I think Sims 5 will be a tricky game because, and I am assuming what I just said was 100% accurate which it wont be, EA can interpret Sims 4's success in two distinct ways. The right way (in my opinion) would be to see that the game was panned at launch for clearly being a shill for DLC, with features cut bare to allow for more future DLC. Seeing this EA would realize that if they want to keep the series alive and seen as something worth a full price tag and not something to ignore for several years, they would put more effort into making the base game significantly better than any previous game, with not only new content and features, but also making sure to include all previous integral features from previous base games and improving them through adding additional content. One smart cookie might also decide to include features that are traditionally their best selling DLCs such as Pets into the base game at launch, making the game more appealing to purchase at launch instead of making people wait for their preferred DLC to come out first.

OR

They will notice that Sims 4 was panned at launch and only purchased as the DLC came out, and they will take this to mean that they need to make DLC available at launch, and also to make more DLC available over time, possibly but cutting features from the base game. Or creating DLC that is much more expensive but adds significant changes, such as new ages, new environments, new skills, new needs, etc.

Either way, I have an inkling that in the next few months, if the game is not selling well, they will say it is because they tried to be progressive and include homosexual relationships, completely ignoring that it has been with the series for years. They also might blame Russia's rating of the game and the homophobic nature of it. I hope they keep their mouths shut this time but it a mention of the gay argument isn't out of their ballpark given it has been their fall back the last few years.

 

[Charli]

GOOD.jpg can't stand listening to people wittering on about their bloody Sims family.

We get it, you're living out your fantasy of murdering your family in a boxed in kitchen fire. Blah blah.

 

[Spanglish Guy]

I can't say I am surprised to hear this, holding the series ransom to its performance. To be honest though I couldn't see EA actually cancelling one of their biggest cash cow series even if The Sims 4 does flop, and I personally want it to so that EA don't continue with this ridiculous stripping of features. But knowing EA they will likely just attribute its failure to something else as usual before maybe realising the problem further down the line.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

Oh snap! EA is making ultimatums now..you're treading on thin ice there EA.

You already screw your fans up to the point where majority of them boycott you.

 

[blubseabass]

The whole Sims 4 thing has made me sad to no end. Not because of EA. Ow no. Because of gamers.

I have nothing to do with EA or the development of the Sims, and I've been a great fan of it since the Sims 1. The hate TS4 gets is absolutely insane. I've played it 30 hours just this weekend and I can't wait to go home from work to play it again. I love it, and I especially love the new features.

Now you don't have to like the game. Go ahead and do not like it. You probably didn't like it before you played it to begin with. Fun is in the eye of the beholder. But what I absolutely despise is that Maxis/EA obviously took a gamble with their game, trying to improve the core at the cost of arguably stuff that is not the most important in the Sims, and all they get is hate. That is just unfair. The Sims 4 was born dead. The Sims 3 was the biggest addition a game could make. It could have never succeeded. We are so damn focused on loss, that we kill ourselves and our industry by demanding everything. Because we gamers always want fucking everything on a fucking silver plate and are such decadent pieces of shit that if 2 or 3 features from a previous iteration don't make it in the new iteration, we spew out or conservative hate all over those who are really trying to move the game forward. Absolutely despicable.

It's NOTHING like the SimCity, where the game just didn't work at launch. It's way more like Civilization 5 vs Civilization 4.

[REMOVED SNEER]

Yes, I'm furious.

 

[Candidus]

Here's what I'd like to know. I haven't bought the game but I've watched a little on Twitch and I'm thinking: "They removed some of the fundamentals from Sims, like a whole stage of youth. They don't have pools and everything added over the course of all the Sims 3 expansions has been left out-- which is alright and expected... But with all that in mind, where IS the work they HAVE done? It's uglier than I expected it to be (Sims 3.2 at best). There's nothing to do. The loading screens are everywhere forever. Isn't the Sims 4 just Sims 3 in a hick town with minimal services, nothing to buy and no hope of escape?"

I feel sorry for anyone who wasted their money. And if Sims 4 is the end, maybe it's for the best. Maybe they'll sell the license to someone competent once it's been languishing for a decade or so.