EA has threw Sims lore and consistency out the window since The Sims 3, with things such as Sunset Valley being a prequel to TS1, and various TS2 Sims appearing in DLC neighborhoods with no sense of consistency either, i.e. Don Lothario getting isekai'd to a TS3 DLC World. To be fair about TS3 though, they did at least make some Sims their past-selves, i.e. the Summerdream Family in TS3 is just Oberon and Titania (before adopting Puck and Bottom), and the Pleasant Family in TS3 is Daniel and Mary-Sue Pleasant as newlyweds.
The Sims 3 development felt a lot more rough compared to The Sims 2 at least, and you can feel it with how earlier expansion packs have more content than later ones where they started to repeat the themes. Into the Future and Ambitions with Simbot/Plumbot and Time Machine. - and I've also always disliked the whole Isekai/Time Travel stuff in 3 too.
Part of it was that EA was starting to get too greedy midway of Sims 3 lifespan and less cohesive vision, and they needed an excuse to have 'varied looking' content down as the store took off, while early Sims 3 was made in the less greedy time.
Late 2000s EA was still a company that still respected devs enough to allow them put out bangers like Dragon Age/Mass Effect and Mirror's Edge - early Sims 3 was in that cohort.)
Then EA decided that they'd go down the microtransaction route. The expansion quality of Sims 3 went downhill in later expacs (Showtime was a big tipping point, it's about social media integration and pure Katy Perry-tie in cashgrab expac). Now you can compare how Sims 3 University is handled compared to Sims 2 University and earlier Sims 3 EPs (e.g. Late Night) in term of details.
It was also a mistake that the Sims 3 was initially conceived as '50 years before Sims 2' in term of Sunset Valley story, they ran into a problem where The Sims should be depicting a more contemporary life, with computer and stuff, and they can't do the 1950s setting for the whole game and expansion packs, so we end up getting time travel and continuity mess we ended up with.. (and so they can also sell more town packs)
But The Sims 3 was still an ambitious game with real amount of content and gameplay system in it, it's a good sandbox game with high customisability - but I'll admit it's less well designed and cohesive compared to 2..
Why EA thought that this needed a livestream reveal, and it won't come out for 4 more months, is them REALLY trying to stretch marketing on this decade-old game.
a decade old game that tons of people still play because there arent a lot of games on the market that fit the niche this game hits. there's inzoi, but that doesnt hit like sims.
They can't make a more 'profit optimised - low effort, high return' Sims that can appeal to broadest audience (except us transphobes) than Sims 4. At that point you need to sell every furniture in game individually.
The Sims 4 was purely designed for business optimisation that's less about gameplay in mind, and it reached the equilbirium of cost/profit assessment. If they have to develop Sims 5, players will have to lose the amount of the expac content that were made for the previous installments - but what kind of innovation can make people care about Sims 5 even make when Sims 4 was no longer about innovation?
Making a new game and hope players jump into it was possible in Sims 1-3 era because each game offered something new in core system enough for the 'waiting period' for expacs to be worth it. What Sims 4 offered wasn't gameplay system, but a disney cartoony look to characters to have the widest appeal, gameplay being easy and unbalanced because the 'target audience' don't care about actually playing the game anyway, they just want to dress up, and it being able to run on absolute potato - while cutting corners and old gameplay elements off so everyone can buy and play it.
There's no major gameplay innovation, Sims 4 was made to specifically marketed to Sims 2 audience who didn't jump on 3 due to bugs and performance problems, and youtuber aggressive marketing to reach new generations who never touched the old games.
Sims 4 has to keep living on its legacy of having a lot of fluff 'content' via sheer amount of DLCs
I don't know how can you expect Sims 5 anyway? Don't say 'make it like Sims 2 and 3 combined and has multitasking of 4 and bigger town, gradual aging, more complex interactions, etc. Because that meant real costly programming effort, while they can just sell more Sims 4 kits for the same amount of profit... and complex game = 'good computer needed', So you can't have people playing the game on netbooks.
Though I'm curious of the imaginations of people here, what can EA realistically do if they want to make Sims 5?
