Is The Sims 5 cancelled? Here's why a Sims 4 sequel is not happening

Is The Sims 5 cancelled?

When Project Rene was announced back in October 2022 as the next big game in the franchise, many assumed it would become the successor to The Sims 4.

EA has never used the words "The Sims 5" in relation to Project Rene, so a fifth numbered game was never made official.

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The company has now come out and explicitly stated that Project Rene is not a successor to The Sims 4, while talking up Project Rene's focus on multiplayer and having a "very social, real-time" environment in a similar vein to 2002's The Sims Online. It's its own separate thing.

Furthermore, EA has stated there are no plans at all for any The Sims 5 game as the company takes the franchise in a new direction and away from numbered entries entirely.

EA / Maxis

Speaking to Variety, Kate Gorman, EA's vice president and general manager of The Sims franchise, said: "The way to think about it is, historically, The Sims franchise started with Sims 1 then Sims 2, 3, and 4. And they were seen as replacements for the previous products.

"What we're really working with our community on is a new era of The Sims.

"We are not going to be working on replacements of previous projects. We're only going to be adding to our universe. With that, you'll see there are more ways to experience The Sims on different platforms, different ways to play, transmedia, and lots of great offerings within this universe.

"So absolutely, we're still continuing to support The Sims 4 more than ever [and still continuing] to deliver expansion packs and updates and fixes. But what this is to say is, the way we're going to do things going forward is a little different."

Why is The Sims 5 not coming out?

In addition to a focus on turning The Sims into an expanding universe, EA has discussed the reasons behind continuing to support The Sims 4, even though it is now ten years old.

There has been controversy over bugs and technical issues with the game, and an earlier indication that the company saw plenty of life yet in The Sims 4 happened in May 2024, when EA announced that they had set up a specific team "to invest in the core game experience" and focus entirely on fixes.

So The Sims 4 isn't going anywhere, and we will continue to see new expansions in the years ahead.

Explaining the decision not to develop The Sims 5, EA executive Kate Gorman told Variety that they are mindful of how much Simmers have invested in The Sims 4.

"We will continue to bring HD simulation experience and what people would want from a 5 – but it doesn’t mean that we’re going to start you over, reset all your progress, and really feel like you’re going to lose all of that amazing play you put into 4," she said.

"I think as we think about the future of it, we want you to continue all of those families and generations. Those creations are your progress, your attachment. We don’t want to reset your progress.

"And so it’s not about as much of what the numbers are in the games, but know that 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."

At the time of writing, there are 16 expansion packs (the 17th one is coming out in October), 12 game packs, 20 stuff packs, and 31 kits (2 more are out on September 19).

But there is also another reason why EA may want to keep The Sims 4 going as long as possible: it is as popular as ever, even after ten years.

2023 was the biggest year in The Sims 4's lifespan in terms of hours played, with a total of 1.8 billion hours in total, no doubt helped by the game going free-to-play in late 2022. For the year 2024 so far, a total of 1.2 billion hours have been played.

So, massive numbers of Simmers remain deeply invested in The Sims 4's ecosystem and content releases, and EA may not want to start from zero again.

It also explains why the team has been experimenting with limited-time events this year (there's another one scheduled to happen this month), as they look for new ways to keep players engaged.

During May's 'Happy at Home' event, there was some backlash over the rollout of exclusive daily login rewards, but EA appears to be happy with how things went.

"The 'Happy at Home' event was our first foray into a new way to play, and we were encouraged to see how many of you enjoyed this new feature," the team said in an official post.

With no end in sight for The Sims 4 as things stand, it seems safe to assume that we can expect to see more limited-time events in the future.