Fans are concerned that a number of developers working on the console version of The Sims 5 seem to have been moved back to work on The Sims 4.
If there’s one company you’d expect to follow a straightforward progression, from one sequel to the next, it’s EA but they have always been very strange in the way they’ve handled The Sims franchise, with their continued reticence in announcing The Sims 5.
The Sims 4 will be 10 years old this September and while EA has often spoken about the mysterious Project Rene, which has been described as the ‘next instalment’ of The Sims, they’ve always avoided calling it The Sims 5.
Project Rene was first announced in 2022 and while there have been updates and rumours since then there’s never been any official confirmation of what it actually is, and now fans are concerned that some developers that were working on ‘The Sims 5’ are indicating that it’s been cancelled.
There’s a great deal of uncertainty as to what’s going on here, as a series of updates on LinkedIn refer to The Sims 5 as being cancelled but none mention Project Rene.
It’s not clear, but they may only be referring to the console version of The Sims 5. Although many versions of The Sims have been released on consoles before, the series has never been anywhere near as popular as on PC and it wouldn’t be a surprise if The Sims 5 launched as a PC-only title.
Even if this version of The Sims 5 has been cancelled there will undoubtedly be a new numbered sequel at some point, but whether that’s Project Rene or not is less clear than ever. In fact, some fans suspect Project Rene may end up as a spin-off, after EA said that support for The Sims 4 would continue in parallel.
The only thing that’s been shown in detail for Project Rene is the build mode, for creating and customising houses, which while an important part of The Sims experience is not most people’s favourite part.
Actual sims have never been shown as part of Project Rene, although the developers in these new LinkedIn ads do talk about working on character customisation tools.
One other possibility is that EA may just stick with The Sims 4, treating it as a true live service title that is intended to last forever and will be constantly updated.
Unfortunately, the reason these posts were made seems to be because of ongoing layoffs at EA, which makes it even harder to guess what’s really going on behind the scenes.
There are multiple different ways to explain these job updates but until EA themselves confirms what their plan is fans are going to be left uncertain about the future direction of the franchise.
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