The Sims Project X: New Insider Report for March 27th, 2026

Question: hey kinda of unrelated.. but… so, about sony investigating TS4 and its stability (or lack of) on PS4… why can’t maxis just move on and abandon the PS4 version and make a full blown PS5 version of TS4 to support it moving forward? 

Sims Insider: I don’t think they’d be targeting PS4 for Project X, but I think the issue mainly stems from that EA doesn’t want to cut any part of the PlayStation audience out of the Sims 4 while the Sims 4 is going.

PlayStation in general actually makes up quite a decent percentage of all players (nearly 30%) compared to Mac and Xbox which make up less than 5% or so. They don’t want to lose any of that audience.

Project X will very much be PS5, as the whole idea is that it’s being thought of as more of a “next-gen” Sims 4.

There was a Sims 5 in early development that started and stopped in the lead up to Project Rene’s reveal (seperate project however) that may have come to PS4, with an engine better designed for the console architecture. The Sims 5 was cancelled altogether though. You may have seen a leak recently that had “Sims 5 cancelled” which referred to that version.

In short, The Sims 4 has kind of become larger than the rest of the franchise itself from a sales number and early feedback sessions from random players over various playtests over several years suggested that players would simply stick with The Sims 4, because they didn’t want to invest in a “a new world” for their Sims. The feedback was pretty much overwhelming that people didn’t want new Sim designs, a new feel, a new look. They all loved how their games looked and felt and would rather have quality of life improvements to the Sims 4.

Which compared to The Sims 3, people were the opposite. People were ready for a new look and feel, excited to start again in a new game. The Sims 4 also doing very well, very fast cemented that player feedback as well. Which is why EA takes it very seriously to do a ton of market research when it comes to The Sims, even if there’s a chance it would leak. They know their playtests and research really indicate how a project is going to go.

The one thing about Project X that I think they’ve kept close to their chest even in Playtests is the fact they’re using Stability AI to develop the game. It’s basically a non-negotiable from EA’s side in order to make use of the partnership EA has made and to get the game out as soon as possible. Maxis was able to negotiate that they wouldn’t be required to use it for The Sims 4, but Project X it is required.

They’re currently using it for concept art, and targeted designs. But will be using it for full scale development of the environments and assets.

I have a feeling they won’t disclose it publicly, simply for the fact they know competitors have received backlash for openly promoting or being found to have used it. But it will be curious to see whether there will be telltale signs of it in the game.

Question: Is there any info if they’re reusing stuff from the canceled Sims 5 for Project X?

Sims Insider: Definitely not. All scrapped, completely different style and look, many of it never made it past pre-development.

Question: Do you know if Project X will still be very different in terms of gameplay, visuals, etc., compared to The Sims 4, even if people say it’s basically Sims 4.5?or it’s literally going to be a copy-paste except for a better engine.

Sims Insider: It’s a remake of The Sims 4 in the grand scheme of things. Give or take.

The only reason why Project X exists is to keep the Sims 4 going without having to have such a large back-catalogue to QA for. That’s basically it. It’s not being made because they want to make a new game, it’s mostly happening out of necessity.

The Sims 5 from what I heard of it probably wouldn’t have been too great, simply because many of the ideas for Project Rene were in it and they basically pulled those ideas from the Sims 5 when they scrapped it.

I’m sure you’ll get more details for Project X sooner rather or later, the reason why they’re using Stability AI is to reduce the normal 4 – 5 development time of a Sims game into less than 2 years. So expect news soon. Good or bad.

Statement: I still have no idea how Project X and Sims 4 are gonna work together. I am very hopeful when I heard DLC I purchased in Sims 4 are gonna carry over to Project X, but the fact not all DLCs will carry over or just CAS/BB but no gameplay mechanics is also worrying me. Even if it takes them time to carry it over to Project X, I won’t mind, as long as good amount carries over with time. Otherwise I am not leaving Sims 4. Continuing to build and expand my current game is much better option than starting over and having to re-purchase same DLC concepts again.

Sims Insider: I wouldn’t trust that DLC’s are going to come with you. They may just port the most popular ones.

The idea of this Project is to simply reduce the back catalogue of the Sims 4. It doesn’t make sense to then bring everything over.

That said, they may potentially find a way to bring it all over as one large seperate container of sorts, so that new code stays seperate, but my understanding is the whole reason for this Project’s existence is EA needs The Sims 4 to cost much less from a QA perspective and the costs of remaking the game so to speak are nowhere near as large as the ongoing QA costs of the Sims 4 longterm.

General Thoughts and Insider Opinions on The Sims Franchise Future

Question: So… what are we supposed to do? Support Project X to keep people over at Maxis employed and keep Sims franchise going or boycott and let this franchise die? We are cooked bro!

Sims Insider: It’s a very hard question. I do think for the majority of people, they’ll still consume the Sims like normal so nothing will probably change.

To give you a bit of an example, I believe the original Sims shipped somewhere over 15 million units. The Sims 2 shipped somewhere over 7 million or so. The Sims 3 shipped around the same.

Now to compare, the Sims 4 had sold (not including free copies) something to the effect of 45 million or so copies in the months leading up to free to play. I think when they announced Free To Play, we had 50 million lifetime players so I’m guessing 5 or so million came from those weekends where they let people play for free or whatever it was. And I believe they added another 50 million or just under free players post free to play. But 45 million was the last number I heard and I don’t think physical copies are sold anymore, not sure.

Anyway, you can see there that the audience is absolutely massive. And while not all 90 million or so players are actively playing, that’s the biggest pool of players that EA have ever seen for the Sims, let alone a single game. One of the times where the stars aligned was the Cottage Living pack, that seems to make sales explode. Probably explains why we’ve seen EA dabble in that cozy town sort of idea more frequently since then.

Sorry I’m rambling, but the point I’m trying to make is they have a huge audience now. So whenever they tried things like The Sims Store, or loot box or “point” systems in the mobile games, it was to a small audience and so often you would pay through the nose to get barely anything for EA to see any real pay off.

Now they have such a huge playerbase, they can launch a Marketplace strategy and they will see significant profit from the smallest changes.

So a Kit might have 25 assets for $5. The Marketplace lets them say “hey, what if we did 25 assets for $8 because this theme is popular” or “hey, what if we do 15 assets for $5 because we know people will eat this up”.

What it seems like to me is EA is using its creators to get them to dynamically price in this mindset so to speak, so that when EA does it with future packs, it’s “the norm”.

I obviously suggest to people that should not engage but realistically, with an audience so massive, I think it’s very clear that EA simply don’t care what a few thousand people say online. Hence why they won’t address the online backlash. Even if 1 million people engage in the marketplace, which is just over 2% of its paying customers and just 1% of its overall customer base, EA will be making “moola”.

And with an audience that large, I doubt it would be hard to get those numbers which is why EA is doing it. You have to remember that The Sims gets a very similar amount of players to games like Fortnite and they know with their V-bucks, they can raise the price of them and people online will be mad, but the general audience won’t give it a passing thought.

And of course, it starts to make sense why Project X exists. If they can even just have 20% of paid customers from The Sims 4, move to a new platform that costs less money to maintain without the large back catalogue, uses more mainstream technology for assets and art, updates tech to isolate bugs and issues, and reuses a lot of the Sims 4 already, you have 9 million paid customers which is still a huge success over some previous games in the franchise.

So while of course, if the marketplace or Project X fails then Maxis will probably be sold off with the IP, but the chances of that actually happening would have to mean less than 10% – 15% or so of paid customers for The Sims 4 would have to move over, and I think EA know they’ll probably get more than that very easily. Hence why they’re going just going for it.

Time is going to be the ultimate truth teller here, because there’s every chance EA could find themselves back where they were with the franchise in 2013 where they had abused all goodwill from their fandom. But the numbers were much much smaller then. It would be a massive blow for them for it to happen again on this scale. Some of us would love to see it happen though, just to see the statements from people in power saying “you’re wrong” when you suggest this kind of aggressive monetisation will backfire. We said it for The Sims Mobile and they found a studio that didn’t think about those things and look what happened…It died a few years later.

The Tales of Sims 4 Development

Sims Insider: The Sims 2 and 3 were an interesting case. They were successful in the grand scheme of things, but EA could never recapture that same audience. I’m sure they found a mix of reasons through market research.

I suppose that’s what Sims 4 became.

Just a cesspool of ideas of from “make it online”, “bring back the toilet humour”, “make it live service” and god knows what. It did work though, but a lot of the round table discussions weren’t “how do we make a good Sims game” it was “what ideas can we try to get those numbers back”. To their credit, it worked and I do think they made a good game in the end. You just can’t look past how corporate certain aspects feel, mostly when it comes to the base game.

When I see the Take an Angry Poop message pop up, it’s an example of how I know that was put in because EA were like “make it funny! Do the Sims humour thing!” instead of a developer having fun on their own terms. “What if your Sims laughed so hard, they died from laughter?? Wouldn’t that be funny?? Put that in the game!!” The vibe definitely shifted once the base game shipped, but the base game always feels like a mix of corporate ideas thrown together with things chucked out when they didn’t work, over a solid vision decided before the built the game.

And of course, the people at EA who have no idea take all the credit, while every Sims player knows it was the free updates and DLC Maxis worked on that eventually made the game good. Not whatever EA thought would be “fun!!” And “so quirky and full of life!!” In the base game. “You’re adding cupcakes?! What if you made a whole machine that made cupcakes?? Like a huge giant machine! How cool would that be??” etc etc. That definitely was a defining factor in the games success, go EA.

And it wouldn’t surprise me if that in itself made EA so keen to take control over Maxis even now, that sort of skewed form of events in EA’s eyes that absolutely didn’t happen. “We made the Sims 4 the success it was!” and I guess that’s why projects like Rene that everyone knows is going to fail, has EA going full steam ahead because they don’t realise what actually made the Sims 4 a success at all.

I know that whenever EA recognise the Sims 4 has been the longest running Sims game, they pat themselves on the back in-front of Maxis who made it happen.