Maxis and Electronic Arts have announced The Sims 4, and if anyone had any doubts, the press release makes it pretty clear that the company is still reeling from embarrassing failure that was the SimCity rollout:
"The Sims 4 celebrates the heart and soul of the Sims themselves, giving players a deeper connection with the most expressive, surprising and charming Sims ever in this single-player offline experience. The Sims 4 encourages players to personalize their world with new and intuitive tools while offering them the ability to effortlessly share their creativity with friends and fans," reads the press release. "The Sims 4 celebrates the heart and soul of the Sims themselves, giving players a deeper connection with the most expressive, surprising and charming Sims ever in this single-player offline experience. The Sims 4 encourages players to personalize their world with new and intuitive tools while offering them the ability to effortlessly share their creativity with friends and fans."
When it was first released, SimCity suffered from a variety of severe issues that often prevented players from logging into the game at all. EA's DRM system for SimCity mandated an "always on" connection, which proved to be disastrous as players attempted to access the game in high volumes and crashed the servers. While the servers are down, no one is able to play.
The log-on issues proved so severe that Amazon eventually withdrew the digital version of SimCity from its marketplace, citing customer complains. EA and Maxis now maintain a server status page for SimCity.
The new, offline Sims 4 was announced by EA on its blog today:
Today we are revealing to our top fans the fact that The SimsTM 4 is coming to PC and Mac in 2014.
The Sims franchise is fueled by the passion and creativity of its millions of fans around the world. Their continued devotion to the franchise ignites the fire of creativity of the team at The Sims Studio, driving them to continually improve and innovate on one of the world's most successful simulation game that has sold more than 150 million copies worldwide.
More information will be revealed later today here on The Beat, so stay tuned.
Share your excitement for the game on Twitter with the hashtag #TheSims4.
