The next ‘Sims 4’ update arrives April 21, but as promised by SimGuruDrake, there will also be a super important content announcement Tuesday, April 19. In just a few days, we will have some real content to look forward to. Keep your fingers crossed for an expansion pack that adds substantial new features in the gameplay (*cough* toddlers).
SimGuruGraham joined forces with SimGuruDrake in the forums at the end of last week to address the Sims news drought. They confirmed EA will announce multiple content releases at once, similar to the one back in 2014 that laid out three months worth of content and brought ghosts, pools and new careers at the same time (as Simmer drake_mccarty so kindly points out).
The two gurus also spoke on why there have been large content release gaps and why The Sims 4 content announcements are so close to the actual release date, which wasn’t the case in past iterations of the game.
Not sure where you read about this, but here's a super quick explanation... I'm simplifying or glossing over a lot of finer points here, but this is the crux of what we deal with. The issue relates to when we can count revenue on sales of a product.
For upcoming content that we plan to sell, we can announce it whenever we want and it doesn't impact our financials because you haven't had the opportunity to purchase it yet.
For upcoming content that's planned to be a free addition to a product that you've already purchased - for example, when pools were added to the game - then once we've announced that content, it needs to be made available to a consumer within the same financial quarter that we announced that content in. If that content does not launch within that quarter, then we can't recognize any of the revenue we've made on sales of the game until we deliver on the expectation we established.
Things become slightly more complex for us, because we frequently launch new free content alongside new paid content.
To add to this:
We are silent about things not because we don't want to share things with you (WE REALLY REALLY WANT TO!) We just want to be sure that when we tell you about things you are able to get the information and content as close together as possible.
But we are also acknowledging with what I guess you could call a "new communication strategy", which will kick off on Tuesday so I won't go into tooo much detail on this particular subject yet but will be happy to answer the questions I can next week!, that you'd like to have some information about content prior to the official announcements so you can "plan your purchases ahead of time" (and I'm paraphrasing the quoted text since I can't remember who said it in what thread).
As SimGuruGraham mentioned: Things are slightly more complex for us because we launch new free content alongside the paid content.
EA’s upcoming announcement comes on the heels of a suspicious leak out of The Sims Latin America branch last week. The unnamed face behind The Sims Latin America social media accounts claimed the following:
- Stuff Pack set for June release
- Restaurant-themed Game Pack coming soon (possibly before June’s Stuff Pack)
- The next Game Pack won’t be like anything we’ve seen in the Sims franchise before
- No toddlers or pets expansion pack on the horizon
As the rumor mill went full blast in the forums , SimGuruDrake swooped in to calm the shitstorm. She reminded Simmers that any official announcements will come directly from EA’s North American offices at Redwood Shores (EARS).
Thursday’s Sims patch will end the Spring Challenge . So make sure you’ve harvested all your growfruit and found all available easter eggs. We’ll keep you updated on EA’s official announcement.
