Final Statement on The Sims Secrets

So I’ve been contacted by an “ex-employer” who has asked me to stop sharing certain information, as things like the sales figures have caused some controversies as they didn’t want that information public.

So to avoid any drama, I’ll be quiet.

Apparently there are additional reasons why they didn’t want that info to be known by players

Final Secrets from The Sims Insider

Before this final goodbye, this Sims Insider shared last bits of information on The Sims sales performance and The Sims Project X development. Revealing interesting information like 7-12 million concurrent players of The Sims 4 on Console every month. And the fact that The Sims Project X development is doing well.

Read the final insider statements:

Sims 3 Sales and Sims 4 Console Performance

Question: Why did the numbers dip so much during TS3 when it started out with 2.1 million with World Adventures ? 

Sims Insider: I know I’ve missed a lot of responses and I’ll get to them, just very time poor at my current job, deadlines and stuff.

The Sims 3 started really strong but gradually overall interest faded quite quickly. The open world wasn’t received as well as expected for both technical/performance reasons and design feedback. There was quite a large amount of internal feedback that the game didn’t focus on “the sims themselves” and too much about the world.

I don’t know if I agree with that as being the biggest reason but it’s the one that was considered throughout 4’s development and framed how EA announced it to the world. But I think it goes back to what I’ve said in the past, that EA found with the smaller environments; players were more likely to explore and invest when something new was always a short distance from their Sims houses in the world etc. I’ve talked about it in the past.

And yes. EA know they struck gold with 4’s overall presentation with the public etc. and the gameplay loop that built from that.

But console also has a decent part to play in that, console alone gets around 7 – 12 million or so players a month for the last year or so, which is insanely high for any game, let alone for a mostly PC based audience. So while console alone isn’t the sole reason for the games success, it’s definitely adding quite a boost to every DLC that The Sims 2 and 3 didn’t have. Though not enough to even out the playing field.

But you can understand why EA want to try and profit off console players with things like Creator Kits and the Marketplace being largely framed as “giving console players access to CC” because there’s a good sized audience they’re targeting.

But overall it’s something to consider when you compare Sims 3 to Sims 4, Sims 4 is getting a slight boost that Sims 3 didn’t have the opportunity to have. But not enough to drastically change numbers.

On Sims 4 Bridgerton Kits

Statement: One hour until the Bridgerton Kit reveals… I can’t believe this is what we have resulted to

Sims Insider: It’s quite interesting that EA are choosing now to have collaborations. I knew an event was coming, had no idea it was Bridgerton themed. This whole collab in this case has been in the works since Dec/Jan when I was told about the event.

Sales and Investors

Statement: These numbers are very insightful. I expected the occult packs to have higher numbers considering how they keep making them, and yet the buggiest, worse functioning game pack (Dine Out) is out there outselling half the expansions 

Sims Insider: The answer is Investors.

Obviously, Investors know how much money the game makes, but what EA doesn’t want is a constant flux of sale figures to paint the story for them.

For example, Free to Play. A lot of investors likely didn’t think it was a good move to move to Free to Play, so EA had to show them it was.

That’s the reason why on the same day they announced Free To Play, they confirmed 50 million players had already been playing the Sims 4. The second thing they did, was announce to the world that Growing Together was super successful in its first month and actually confirmed sales of over 1 million. The reason they did that was simply to ease Investors who weren’t on board with the strategy.

Otherwise, it’s a numbers game. Look at 2022 versus 2023.

2022 had 1 Expansion Pack, as did 2021. Post going Free to Play, EA couldn’t 100% confirm it would backfire sales wise and that the drop in base game revenue wouldn’t result in a dip in overall profit. So they secured three Expansions and brought back Stuff Packs for extra measure.

Luckily for them, it worked extremely well. But had it not, they had an additional two Expansions plus a Stuff Pack over the previous year to make up the difference.

And even if each DLC sold less on average than something like Cottage Living, the amount of DLC would pick up the revenue in hopes year on year it would be similar or better.

So really EA making the Sims 4 sales private works in their favour because it allows them to control the narrative. Instead of having “hey our DLC flopped this year” and risking investors pulling back, they can just say “hey we had X amount of revenue this year” and make it up that way.

That’s why the only time you’ll hear EA ever confirming sales for something is to ease investor concerns. Once they are eased, it’s all private so they can control the narrative. Very rarely will EA as a whole report sales for the sake of it. There’s no incentive for them to do so.

Statement: I could see this being a part of the issue.

I got The Sims 3 when it launched in 2009 and installed it on our family computer. The performance was obviously not good, but it also didn’t feel very intuitive to navigate which left my first hand impression of the game unexicited. I went back to play The Sims 2 until a few packs in.

Sims Insider: It could be. I think the issue lies the overall package. I personally don’t mind the look of the Sims or the game in general, but I suppose I’m blinded by nostalgia. All I dared about was crossing the road and being able to leave my Sims lot boundary. But at the time, people thought the Sims especially looked awful. I believe the term devs spoke about was pudding chins or faces or something was a big talking point. In my opinion, a Sims game where people don’t like the look of the Sims is probably a huge red flag before you even get into the open world. You probably lose a decent chunk of your audience there when they can’t make their Sims look how they want. The world design I don’t think was perfect for keeping players invested, but I don’t think it was the biggest problem.

Especially when The Sims 4 released that Create a Sim demo and the reception was extremely positive despite the rest of the game people were more critical of. I do think that was a strategic move that paid off and was probably the one thing EA did well in 2014. People immediately felt more happy with the results of their Sims and probably had a whole plan in their head of what they were going to do with them which only helped people feel ready to move on when the game launched.

This is of course my opinion, EA’s finding was the open world was the biggest pain point, I just think character design in a life simulator game is extremely important. You want your characters to look good.

Things Going Well For Project X Development

Question: Hey! While I’m reading through your posts, can I ask if there’s any new or old info about Project X that you haven’t shared yet? Honestly, I was expecting some kind of leak from the April playtest, but it seems like everything there was super strict, because we still have absolutely nothing…

Sims Insider: I don’t really have any news on that front. Things are going well. No news on any changes or cancellations, they’re just in the thick of it right now. They’re in that long stretch of development where everything is at different stages.