Project Rene, the codename for the next major Sims game, isn't cancelled. In fact, EA will be doing some closed multiplayer testing this fall. But the in-development game we've occasionally called "The Sims 5" isn't actually The Sims 5 at all, it says. Project Rene and The Sims 4 are both going to be part of "the Sims universe" for the foreseeable future.
During an Electronic Arts investor presentation today, EA entertainment & technology president Laura Miele gave a much more thorough breakdown of The Sims series' future than normally comes out of investor-facing presentations.
"Traditionally, after every release we would replace one version with another, starting from scratch," Miele said of The Sims games 1-3. "Well, we are going to disrupt the sequel model. We are investing in a massive Sims platform."
There are a lot of buzzwords here, the kinds of things investors like, but the long and short is that EA is planning for four different Sims games—The Sims 4, Project Rene, My Sims, and a new mobile game codenamed "Project Stories"—to all share creator tools, a single user content gallery, marketplace, and a social network it's building.
"We will carry forward the tremendous engagement and volumes of content … to make Sims 4 the foundation of our future growth strategy," Miele says. "We will be updating the core technology foundation for the product and we will release fun and exciting content for many years to come."
It feels like a wild thing to say about a now-10-year-old game where each new expansion produces a slew of bugs as it struggles to cohabitate with the dozens of other DLCs. Though I guess this does explain why EA has recently committed a new team to focusing on fixing bugs: The "updating the core technology" of The Sims 4 part of the plan is going to require a lot of faith.
The announcement finally answers the question I've had for over a year about how Project Rene will be related to The Sims 4. Previously EA has made vague statements about continuing to "support" The Sims 4, which I'd assumed was more a reference to quality of life updates, not active continued development.
In a blog post today, Maxis also began talking about the 25th anniversary of The Sims series that's coming up in February. It plans to host another Behind The Sims presentation in January to talk more about the series as a whole, which will likely include some more talk about Project Rene.
