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The Sims 4 is a bit of an oddity. What began as the fourth mainline base game entry in the long running Sims series in 2014 is, nearly 12 years out from that initial launch, almost unrecognisable as a Sims game as we knew them up until this iteration. While history had taught us to expect a brand-new Sims generation every four or five years, The Sims 4 has broken that unspoken rule to become the first truly live-service title in the franchise. The base game went free-to-play in 2022, meaning that monetization is now exclusively through add-ons, ranging from classic expansion packs to increasingly granular microtransactions; and while other Sims games are known to be in development, the intention seems to be to keep The Sims 4 alive alongside whatever successors and spin-offs are coming next.
It’s uncharted waters all round — for the many Simmers who aren’t used to such a long generational lifespans (although, I regret to remind you, TS4 is old enough now that it’s entirely plausible for a teenaged player to have grown up exclusively on this version of the game), but also for the development teams at EA/Maxis who handle the day-to-day of keeping
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