Of their (barely belated) new years message to gamers, the developer of EA’s The Sims sequence of video games has evenly addressed issues about its future throughout the writer in a wide-ranging letter to the neighborhood.
The letter additionally serves as one thing of a light-weight plan for what gamers can anticipate quickly, and sooner or later, alongside what the varied groups are presently engaged on.
The developer begins off the yearly check-in with a press release that makes an attempt to deal with issues about the way forward for The Sims, traditionally one among EA’s most inclusive and culturally various franchises.
This, in fact, comes within the wake of final yr’s bombshell that EA is being taken personal by a coalition led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Funding Fund (PIF), alongside funding corporations Silver Lake Capital and Affinity Companions. The $55 billion acquisition was authorized by EA’s shareholders in December, and is ready to shut by the top of June.
Understandably, many raised issues about what EA’s new possession would imply for its individuals, and portfolio of video games. The information is regarding for The Sims specifically, a sequence that’s lengthy embraced variety and inclusivity, and has traditionally been standard amongst girls, individuals of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ neighborhood.
“Our Sims group’s inventive management, guided by our values of inclusivity, alternative, creativity, neighborhood, and play, has not modified,” the put up reads, although with out referring to the buyout immediately at any level.
“These values encourage the selections we make every day as we plan for at the moment, tomorrow, and the longer term.”
As for what’s to return in 2026 and past, it appears like The Sims group has a number of irons within the hearth. The developer is engaged on “a household of recent Sims experiences” that may discover properties on PC, console, and cellular. Crucially, the put up says that not each expertise will likely be on each platform, to ensure that every to deal with delivering one thing completely different and fascinating.
Future releases, in fact, embody new The Sims 4 content material that focuses on the single-player expertise. The social and extra multiplayer-driven experiences, nonetheless, will as a substitute be present in Challenge Rene, the mobile-first life-sim presently in growth. (Regardless of early confidence that it was a working title for The Sims 5, it is now confirmed that Challenge Rene gained’t, in actual fact, be a direct successor to The Sims 4.)
A few of these tasks will see extra playtesting all through 2026, so it is best to most likely join The Sims Labs if you wish to hear about when/how one can get entangled.
