UPDATE: 2025-07-26 22:11 EST BY LARA JACKSON
Article Clarification
A PR representative for The Sims 4 has reached out to Screen Rant to clarify the following: “While there is no game currently in development titled ‘The Sims 5', Project Rene is continuing its development alongside other exciting new projects within The Sims franchise. Project Rene is a standalone experience focused on building ways for friends to meet, connect, and share while playing together in an all-new world.” Original story as follows.
Electronic Arts has officially confirmed that it has no plans forThe Sims 5.Instead, the company will be focused entirely on adding updates and expansions to the current game,The Sims 4.The company has scrapped the idea of creating a newSimsgame instead of focusing on the game’s current iteration for the foreseeable future.
EA vice president Kate Gorman toldVarietythat the decision was made with fans in mind.Sims 4has been running for over 10 years, and creating a new installment in the franchise would mean its dedicated fans would have to start over from scratch. To prevent this, the company will focus all its current and future efforts on expandingThe Sims 4:“We are not going to be working on replacements of previous projects,” says Gorman.“We’re only going to be adding to our universe.”
The Sims 5 Cancelation Reshapes The Future Of The Sims Franchise
New Sims Titles May Still Be Planned
Gorman makes a nod to thehistory of theSimsgames. According to her, previous numbered editions of the games have been focused on replacing their predecessors. But the newSims 4strategy changes this, shifting the focus to expanding instead of replacing.
Sims 4went free-to-play in October 2022. This change to its monetization format enabled it to focus on creating expansions and building a community. It also introduced many new players to the franchise, by removing the entry fee entirely. The results speak for themselves: according toStatista,as of March 2024, there were more than 85 millionSims 4players worldwide,compared to 20 million in 2020.
Sims 4’s Roadmap May Be Teasing A Game-Changing New Feature
Sims 4’s newest roadmap was just released, and with it comes lots of speculation for features being teased to release further down the line.
Choosing not to work onThe Sims 5, which was known to bein development asProject Rene, will allow EA to continue building this community. The company has promised tokeep creating all the new content and high-quality experiencethat fans might expect of aSims 5,but without packaging it in a brand-new title. This is a huge deviation from the way many other popular franchises operate. Games likeCall of Dutyand theMaddenNFLfranchise have been criticized in recent years forselling practically the same gameas a full-price new title every year.
The ultimate goal, according to Gorman, is to let players continue working on the creations and generations that they’ve put many years into. “Those creations are your progress, your attachment. We don’t want to reset your progress,” says Gorman. From her choice of words, though,it sounds like additionalSimstitles aren’t out of the question, but they won’t be completely blank slates. Instead, “the future of the franchise looks more like keeping your progress, keeping things across titles, and really having an ongoing experience, and not a start-and-stop experience between products.”
Gorman says that the future will look a little different from how the game has done things in the past, though she didn’t elaborate on what this means.The Sims 4fans can expect to continue playing their beloved game, with plenty of expansions and new content in the game’s future.
