They say that all the time. And in fact to be fair this is one of the most moddable games (in all incarnations) around.

And that's gonna be a major problem. Not for us, for them. Because I just bought the last EP for Sims 3 (not including this island thing coming up), so why would I buy a new game so soon and essentially toss all the money I spent on Sims 3 out the window (about 200 bucks, and for me, that's a lot of money)? If they are just gonna release a Sims 3 with better graphics, why would I buy the same game all over again? Eventually, not only EA will have to learn to get consumer feedback through different channels, and yes, that includes forums and social networks. It's basically the same as it is with, say, any given shooter: They are pretty much all the same these days, just with fancier graphics - so why should I buy tons of new games instead of just playing the games I already paid for?

The thing is, there are so many games out there, you have to compete, one way or another. Even EA can't rely on the good name of the Sims franchise forever, they have to get creative. And what better way to improve their games than going directly to the source of the best feedback they can get?

That said, you're probably right, but I still think it's dumb to not browse the web for ideas and input from gamers.

Well, what if EA releases a Sims 4 that is indeed better in terms of gameplay and creating sims etc., however, without the possibility to create own custom content or mods of any kind so everybody would have to buy their EPs and/or store content to make the game more interesting.

They'll be adding new features for sure, of course, they want us to buy Sims 4. But I can also imagine that they'll make sure that it'll be more difficult to customise the game with free MODs and CC as it is now with Sims 3 (and also Sims 2). Instead of supporting free content from Sims 4 players EA might find a way to let their customers buy those things in their store.

Creepy idea, I know...

Another dumb-ass idea, if that's what they are gonna do. I love CC, especially because I can't afford to buy every EP right away, never mind all the SPs. That would be an instant deal breaker for me, and hopefully for others, too (just to let EA know we don't buy just anything they offer us...), even if the rest of the game were the most awesome I've seen in years...


You listening, EA? Because you might wanna rethink any plans of that sort if you wanna keep your customers happy.

I'd really rather not imagine that.... Ugh.. Sims with Steam...

In fact, any game that requires another program to be installed just so you can play it is just plain wrong. The thing that EA had with TS3 (EA Download something or other) was bad enough, but at least it wasn't vital to the running of the game.

I experienced a fleeting moment of joy when I saw the news release, but then reality hit and the moment passed. I anticipate the same kind of transition I experienced from S2 to S3... a huge YAY!!!, but then realizing I could not do all of the things I loved doing in S2 in S3. Going from all of the expansion packs to vanilla base game is always hard, even if the graphics are prettier. In fact, I owned S3 for 2 years before I really even started to play it. I remember buying it, installing it, playing it for about 10 minutes, being bored out of my mind, and didn't pick it up again for several years. I spend most of my time building, and I'm afraid to even hope that the developers will address the building system, which is woefully inept in so many areas (stairs, anyone?).

I was also frustrated because for the last several weeks I've been working on building -the- world that I've always wanted, only to hear that S4 is around the corner. But, having read that many in the community will not be jumping ship immediately, I may be able to continue working on it.

That's my $0.02, anyway.

I'd say go ahead and build your new world. Even if the Sims 3 ended tomorrow, there would still be plenty of people who will be playing it for years to come, even if they bought the Sims 4. Look at Sims 2. New stuff is being made for it by fans to this day, and people are obviously still having fun playing it. No need to suddenly stop just because a new one is coming out in a year.

I agree. I only got the sims 2 last year

Agreed, except that's how I felt about Sims 3! I still have not purchased 3. I still like Sims 2 better(from what I have seen).

So I'm not the only person that actively dislikes the Goth family, specifically, Bella. I loathe that Sim. Awesome.

Personally, I'd like to have basic weather in the base game (with the option to turn it off) but I wouldn't want pets (other than fish and maybe a bird or caged critter). As much as I love having a few dogs and cats in my game it just doesn't seem worth all the extra crap that comes with them. I'd much rather see pets addressed in a farming/country life pack.

I'd definitely like to see more building options in the game right from the start. I can live with using the same couple of couches and tables over and over as long as I can have full building sets and useful tools.

They both have their pros and cons. When I got a new laptop and got TS3 I didn't think I'd care for it as much as TS2. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself proven wrong. Game-wise, I think I do like TS3 much better but I miss how much CC was available for TS2.

Same here. When I got Sims 3 I thought I'd still play Sims 2 every now and then, however, I have liked the graphics of Sims 3 better and when World Adventures got released I enjoyed playing S3 more than S2 because I looove adventures. I still have the Sims 2 and sometimes I enjoy playing with my S2 Yoda (a cute little Sim created by CamyLee Jinn).

I'm a bit surprised about EA's announcement at this time. I'd rather expect that after the release of the next S3 expansion pack. Obviously they're not afraid people could decide not to buy the last S3 EP and wait for Sims 4... or they think that people will buy all of it anyway...

I'll try not to get too excited about Sims 4, however, I wouldn't mind to buy it for a reduced prize... providing that I don't mind to wait another year (or two) before that'll happen.

I expect I'll be waiting a year or two to purchase the Sims 4, in part because I can't stand playing the vanilla game and want to wait for you lovely modders to do your magic, but mostly because I don't trust EA as far as I can throw their headquarters, and I'm not giving them a single dime of my money until they prove that they're not ripping us off.

I would buy the Sims 4 right away if they implemented a stronger, more versatile build system, but who am I kidding? They'll probably make it worse.

I've been anticipating TS4 for years now, most of all for the graphical improvements and appearance of sims and CAS. I will undoubtedly buy it as that's around the time I'll have a proper gaming pc but now the initial excitement of "OMGZ SIMMIES 4 *RUNS AROUND SCREAMING AND JUMPING IN MY HEAD*!!!" has passed I've realised how far TS3 has come, and all of the mods and CC that will stay with it. Of course there'll be conversions and whatnot like there was with TS2-TS3 but not all of it, and not all of the creators, especially no amazing mods of Twallan I thought I'd go from TS3 to TS4 without a second thought (seriously, I need an improvement on these wonky joints and simplistic/stretched/unrealistic/whatsit facial animations) but now I think about it there's so much of TS3 I still have yet to explore (I haven't bought any of the recent EPs because of a lousy laptop) and all of this glorious, fully-developed CC!
Hell, if I want realism I've got imagination and Skyrim.
Not that I won't be watching TS4 very eagerly, the mods, scandals, graphics and OMFGZZTHEYHAZRUINEDIIIIIIIIIIIIITs will be interesting indeed! Besides, I've still not got round to uploading something to MTS for TS3.

I like the Pixar-ish faces, but why would I switch? Ea's track record lately hasn't been amazing (although it's pretty hilarious how they have to confirm Sims 4 has an offline mode), and besides, Sims 3 FINALLY has everything I could want from a Sims game. An open world, clothes and hairstyles actually from this decade, body sliders, aliens, magic, um... Makin' Magic-style DRAGONS (and a medieval neighborhood!), seasons, pets, a university (and herbs, lol), an OPTIONAL celebrity system (thanks Supernatural!), ownable vacation resorts, and nearly 5 years of custom content to back it up.

Sims 4 has... Pixar faces. Which is pretty cool, but each base game has only ever brought marginal improvements over the last one, and I've had to wait for expansions and *premium* store content that are pretty much repeats of the last game's to get it back up to standard.

I'm hoping they fix the UV maps. Cramming tops, bottoms, and shoes onto one single texture is frustrating, plus detail is always lost. The sims are also too cartoon-y for my taste. The one thing I don't like about this franchise is having to sit through the same EP releases. At this rate, Sims 4 won't have complete EPs that make it fun until after Sims 5 is announced XD

Im hoping that the sims 4 will have more stuff for kids, toddlers and babies like in the sims 2. I would also love to ditch the fricken burrito babies I dont even play with anymore because I find them annoying and kinda ugly at first they were cute but after playing sims 3 for almost 3 years you (well me any way) get tired of them. Somthings I also would like to see is better furniture it the base game instead of ugly couches and well everything else and more things in the base game like weather, maybe some pets. I wanna see the promo video soooooooooo bad I wish we didnt have to wait

Part of the problem with a franchise like The Sims is that it rather literally simulates nearly everything. EA isn't putting nearly the level of manpower into the product that its income is warranting -- i.e., even though it's pretty much carrying their business they're still keeping the product release cycle at 6+ months per expansion, with the rest of their efforts going into microtransaction crap. However, being able to put the game into the same state they left the previous version in is a massive undertaking that would take literal thousands of man-years of development. That would pretty much mandate that they either release the product sans expansions and then incrementally improve upon it from there, as they have always done, or that they hold off on releasing anything, alienating casual fans but providing something more complete. Hardcore gamers and the diehards would always prefer the latter option, but any cursory look at the complaints from non-diehards on (for instance) a Kickstarter project that goes over deadline, and the current trend for alpha buy-ins and early access, will tell you that the mainstream opinion is often to have a lower quality product on a measurable deadline that can be fixed as they go, rather than to have a higher quality product after an indefinite delay that needs little or no fixing aside from maintenance and stability improvements.

I absolutely agree that core realism features like Seasons should be included right from the beginning. Seasons (with NRaas Tempest, of course) is by far the best TS3 expansion because it just completes the picture so well. Waiting until the end of the product cycle is terrible for something that adds so much immersion and adds to the "one more hour" factor. On the other hand, I can see a good business reason why they'd prefer to keep it as an ace in the hole, too -- if they string it out longer before they finally complete the product, people will be more willing to sit on their hands and buy the interim stuff to sate themselves until it's finally done (gah, sometimes I wish I were more trusting that corporations actually had my interests at heart ;-)).

As to the cartoony characters, I'm ambivalent. The Sims has always been a sort of cartoon, in its own internal consistently-inconsistent universe. On the other hand, I found I liked The Sims 3's character realism far more than I liked The Sims 2's -- probably because I skipped both The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 when they were first released (having been an original The Sims player way back in the day and thinking that the move to a full-3D game was a blasphemy), and only eventually tried out both in late 2011, at which point with 4 EPs and 4 SPs under its belt The Sims 3 was clearly superior in terms of character customisability to The Sims 2, in spite of its other realism farts like my-car-has-a-short-range-garage-to-curb-teleporter and everyone-has-a-cellphone(-oh-wait-now-it's-a-smartphone). The everyone-looks-slightly-Indian (as in 'from India' =P) face structure from The Sims 2 also immediately stuck out for me, and the customisability of The Sims 2 in terms of finessing the face was so much lower than in The Sims 3, in particular due to the really low polygon vanilla models. I also think a lot of the people who grew up on The Sims 2's cartoony characters were really put off by the move to The Sims 3, especially since the original stuff in The Sims 3 was pretty much "everyone's pretty, deal with it", so that might have prompted EA to try to move to a compromise between the two. I think it might be worse for wear in that case.

I don't know if I will get Sims4.

Spend a lot of money to the addons from S1, S2 and S3 and even I don't have them all now for S3.

And I am also a little bit disapointed about the S3 bugs, that occures.
I've read a lot about for trying to solve them, but some bugs I can't get solved even if I use 3rd party hacks and mods, and without by using a clean EA installation.

What would EA can do better in Sims4?

Okay, maybe they can provide also with a 64Bit Option, so it would be run more stable on 64Bit systems.
If they bring the weather on, then they could use a real daylight system. Shorter daylight in winter and a longer one in summer.
That would be a good option.

But more Interactions?
I think if you have all addons, you have a lots of interactions, that a real live day have to had 48 hours to play them all.

If Twallan is not moddin'...I ain't buyin'. Period.

you know what would be a really great idea... if EA/Maxis were to somehow get rid of all lots whatsoever like make it so that you could just buy the land you want with some kind of selector and then you could build as much as you want as long as you have the simolions to buy the land and maybe a way to build roads it always bugged me when there was this big empty plot of land that can be used for a 64/64 plot then it takes an hour for your sim to walk there because there isn't a road nearby for they're cars

OOO had a thought Two Words- off-road vehicles maybe three words I guess but you get the idea

I have to admit - I bought TS3, then went back about a year later for TS2 during an online sale. I will likely buy TS4, if only out of curiosity. But I *need* more family-functionality. What happened to babies with - gasp - legs? And family kisses? And dancing with your children? Children playing instruments? Children talking to held babies? Toddler to toddler interactions? Better yet, I wish we had preschool or daycare for the active family to use, and some more interactions for children like horseback riding and gardening. My sister does those things at nine years old.
Also, let's hope for base game TS2-style apartments.

Yeah. I got Pets when it came out and I've been wanting another for a long time but could never pick which one and money's tight. Guess it's good I couldn't decide.

hear hear! I build. A lot. I rarely play with my sims more than a few hours after their house is finished and very rarely a multi-generational family, but once in a while I'll do so for a bit before getting bored. I was shocked the other day at the incredibly low (compared to TS2 anyway) number of interactions between a married couple. Really? Kiss? Hug? Their relationship was maxed, too. What happened to snogging on the couch with limbs flailing and jumping into your love's arms?**I didn't even realise there -were- burrito babies until today. One was moving around on the floor as if standing up. That was creepy.

Horse-riding kiddos would be great. As would actual western riding activities, given all the clothing and furni with Pets was rather western but all the horse centric stuff was English, which I don't mind, but it doesn't match up. Barrel racing and pole bending seems like things that would be no harder to add than jumping and racing.

(EDIT: Nevermind. Apparently people not even going steady can jump into romantic interests arms but spouses can't. Hrm.)