EA and Maxis truly have found a niche and dominated it for decades with their unrelenting Sims franchise. The Sims 4 was first launched in 2014 and it has since seen 11 Expansion Packs, 10 Game Packs, 18 Stuff Packs, and 9 Kits released as additional content.
This is before you even look towards the thriving modding scene with thousands of new mods being released for The Sims 4 each month. We know we all want to know when The Sims 5 is coming out - and whether we'll see it this year - but we're not sure EA and Maxis need it just yet.
The next generation of The Sims is coming - but will we see The Sims 5 in 2022?
Will The Sims 5 come out in 2022?
Most recently, The Sims 4's Modern Menswear Kit was released on December 2nd, 2021. This isn't long ago at all and it's safe to say that The Sims 4 is still very much a living and growing game.
We know the Cottage Living Expansion Pack - the most recent major addition to The Sims 4 - was released way back in July 2021, but these releases are sparse at the best of times. The fact that we haven't seen one in a handful of months doesn't mean that development for The Sims 4 is winding down - the Expansion Pack before that was released almost eight months prior!
That being said, things are slowing down - a little bit. Although these content releases aren't spaced out abnormally, they are a little more spaced out than they were a couple of years ago. The COVID-19 pandemic could be as much to fault for this, though, with remote working impacting development. EA and Maxis are keeping tight-lipped about the transition from The Sims 4 to The Sims 5, so offering any definitive answer to the question "will The Sims 5 be coming out in 2022" would be speculation at best.
We know development on "the next generation" of The Sims is underway - according to an interview conducted by VentureBeat with Laura Miele, EA's Chief Studio Officer, in April 2021. However, if we haven't heard anything since then... It could be quite some time before we hear more and there's nothing to say that The Sims 5 will arrive before 2023.
As you can see from the "Year in Gaming" statistics shared on The Sims' social media over the last few weeks, there are a lot of people playing The Sims 4. Do we really need a new game right now?