“The Next Evolution” for Single Player is being developed by Electronic Arts and Maxis.
The last couple of weeks have been really difficult for players who have been navigating the rumors and speculation surrounding The Sims Project X. The Sims Team reassured us to bring clarity to the speculation, claiming it as “misinformation” only to be met with a new Sims Franchise Roadmap today. Which mentions “the next evolution” after mentioning The Sims 4.
The Roadmap is still very vague, but promises to deliver more clarity in the coming months. In my assumption (and don’t take it for a fact!) – EA and Maxis are trying to give the next few Sims 4 gameplay releases a good spotlight before the talks move onto a new Sims experience.
For now, that experience has been known in the rumor mill under “Project X” codename, as mentioned in the official EA Careers job listing.
A Team Dedicated to Next Evolution
Both the graph and the official statement by EA and Maxis mention the next evolution. As revealed in the Roadmap, there are going to be multiple projects including “a family of new Sims experiences” across PC, Mobile and Consoles, Project Rene, ongoing releases and support for The Sims 4. Which mentions “delivering content & updates” to the current single player entry.
However, the team also confirms that more than a half of single player developers are not just working on The Sims 4, but “the next evolution” as well.
As I mentioned in the title, this is all very vague but confirms multiple single player projects being worked on at Maxis. It would be weird to deny an upcoming Sims successor game by claiming it as a next evolution. Right?
Read the full statement on The Sims Single Player experiences below:
At its core, The Sims was built on a deep, single-player life simulation, chock full of rich systems, meaningful storytelling, and player agency that puts you in control. That foundation isn’t going anywhere. We’ll continue to deliver content and updates to The Sims 4 and we are committed to improving the experience.
Single-player PC and console experiences will always be a part of our future, with more than half of our global development team dedicated to The Sims 4 and the next evolution. More news in the coming months!
It Differs from Project Rene
Speaking about The Sims Project Rene, EA and Maxis clarified that the multiplayer game will not be a successor to The Sims 4. Also revealing that this multiplayer spin-off focused on social play is a separate experience from any future deep, single player life simulation experiences.
Thanks to ongoing player feedback, Project Rene has evolved to focus on social multiplayer play, offering a more direct way for friends to share creativity together. It is not the successor to The Sims 4 and is a separate experience from any future deep, single player life simulation experience. It introduces a new way to explore and play together within the growing Sims family of games, welcoming Simmers who want to connect directly with other players.
What about The Sims 4?
The Sims 4 is not going anywhere. Maxis confirmed that they’ll “continue to deliver content & updates to The Sims 4”. The original rumor about The Sims Project X mentioned that The Sims 4 would be getting new Kits and Game Updates after the release of The Sims 4 Expansion Pack 21, which is unofficially titled “Royalty & Legacy”. Also predicted by the original rumor.
– TS4´s major content is done, expect only updates and kits after EP21
Source: @phii_oda
Fun Fact
All the official Roadmap images that The Sims Team have shared on The Sims Discord have an “X” at the beginning of the image file. Or we might be just looking into things too much now…
What do you think?
Are you satisfied with how The Sims Team has clarified the rumors? Share your thoughts about the latest statement on “the next evolution” single experience for The Sims in the comments below. As always, we’ll keep you in the loop on all the talks and Sims news!
i hope they give it TIME and DON’T RUSH the development of this title, these short term “solutions” have long term ramifications that are very damaging, i sincerly hope they’ve learned from Project Olympus and DON’T REPEAT the same mistakes, this franchise needs a turning point and this is the best time for it, releasing an unfinished or unsatisfying product at this stage will damage this franchise beyond repair specially with competition now. we need a game that is on pair with Sims 2 and 3.
my wishes for Project X:
i want a very powerful lore system like in Sims 2 where each family has its own story, a timeline, i don’t want just for the game to make me create my own story, i want the game to tell me a story aswell, characters like Bella Goth, Dina, Nina Caliente and Don Lotario became so important, unique and iconic to this franchise because of this lore system present in the second game, i want an open world where you can go anywhere in the map, no rabbit holes, you can go to work with your sims, go to school with teenagers/children, all seamlessly, without a loading screen like in modern life simulation games like inZOI, that way, you don’t get bored playing, you can progress with your sims on the work, so it becomes not only a life simulator, but also a job simulator, i want to edit the city and create my own neighboorhood like in Sims 2 and 3, i want Maxis to take more than 30 years in experience with SimCity and The Sims to make the best neighboorhood systems they can, no static maps, all 3D, all neighboor sims having unique routines and story progression, i want smarter sims for real, all they’ve promised Sims 4 would be in 2014, i want a completely revamped emotion system that actually works and has real impact in the gameplay, i want cars, motorcycles, bikes and boats in the base game, and more importantly than everything, i want a game built with a decent foundation easier to deal with, easier for modders, and i want our DLCs to transfer from 4 to this new title, so we can focus on continuity, different themes never seen in previous sims iterations, there are infinite possibilities when it comes to life simulation.
if any Maxis employee reads Sims Community comments, please take it as feedback, that’s what me and the majority of Sims players want.
DOPE!
Is this going to be a mobile game or a PC game? If its mobile? why get rid of Sims Mobile that I love playing.
“Project Rene” appears to be downscaling to mobile only and will be the multiplayer focused game experience. Then there’s apparently a “Project X” which is the “deep, single player life simulation” stuff they call the next evolution and that one is likely only for PC/Consoles. Project X is without a doubt some fork of Project Rene, like I’m sure they use most, if not all of the same base technology.
The «X» in the file names is a reference to the new name of Twitter, not the game title. It’s followed by «FB» (Facebook) and the image format for these two channels tend to be the same and landscape, as opposed to portrait used for Instagram (I’m a graphic designer)