Until now there were nothing but rumors, and few, regarding The Sims 5the long-awaited but not yet confirmed remake of The Sims, the runaway success of Maxis, whose first version was released in the early 2000s (yes, it’s been that long), and whose latest iteration so far, The Sims 4, turned eight years old at the beginning of last September, although today Electronic Arts continues to frequently publish new content (for a fee, yes) for it.
And why did I say that The Sims 5 is already in the works, but not confirmed yet? A few hours ago, there has been an online event called Behind The Sims Summit , in its first edition, and that for half an hour has reviewed the present and future of The Sims, with updates related to The Sims 4, The Sims for mobile and its entire ecosystem. It was celebrated today because, as has been known for some time, as of today The Sims 4 has become a free game on all platforms and, according to the developer, it will be forever. The base game, yes, the contents that I mentioned above are and will continue to be paid.
Although much of the somewhat less than 30 minutes of the event have been dedicated to the current generation, during the last minutes of the video, which you can see here, the leading role has passed to Project Rene, which the company itself defines as “The next iteration of The Sims”. It is true that in the video, at no time is The Sims 5 explicitly mentioned, but of course, either this new iteration is that new version, or Electronic Arts considers that the current model of The Sims is exhausted (what which seems unlikely), and intends to create a new game proposal. I clearly bet on the first option.
Be that as it may, for now Project Rene is going a long way, as they have clarified that it is in an initial phase of development, and therefore it will still be necessary to wait a few years for its arrival on the market. At this time the company would be working on aspects related to customization (which is the little that has been seen at the event), but the plans are much more ambitious, since they point to, and I quote, «fundamentally evolve the way Sims think and behave, how players create and customize their worlds, and innovate in entirely new ways«.
Regarding the customization of the environment, and as we have seen in the video, everything seems very promising, since the process of personalization in detail of a bed and a sofa, in which we have seen color changes, piece-by-piece editing, pattern application, and so on. For those who love spending hours and hours (not to say days, weeks or entire lifetimes) designing their houses piece by piece, this may be the ultimate experience.
Another aspect that we have been able to see is that, although it will also contemplate the game alone (it would be crazy to do without it), they will also focus on the online game, maxing out the game cross platform, that is, that players can interact with each other, regardless of the platform they use to play. In this regard, we have been able to see how two devices, a PC and a smartphone, participated simultaneously in the design of the same space.
We will still have to wait a while, as indicated before, at least a couple of years according to the official statement of EA-Maxisalthough early access testing is also mentioned, so we may not have to wait that long to start getting a lot more information about Project Rene which, I don’t know what you think, but in my head it already means The Sims 5.
