We all know The Sims as one of the most selling games ever, produciong tremendous revenue to its owner (EA).
A few days ago the 6th expansion of The Sims 3 was released, wich turns the fans into the speculation over the future of the saga.
People who knows The Sims know they have a "tradition", wich is is 7 expansions and then a sequel, if this is true for the third installment it means one more expansion and then Sims 4. EA already registered the domain thesims4 in 2010, but now we are "just one expansion away" from the release.
The big question is what innovation will it add to the game? The original Sims started all, the house with little people inside wich you control. The second game replaced the engine to bring all to 3d and increased a lot the customization. The third one gave us the posibility of going out of the house into the neighbourhood and took customization to extreme, being able to choose colors and textures for every item. And then, what else is to be added? In this times most game developers are turning into the online market for greater profits, for example Bethesda anpunced they were developing The Elder Scrolls Online, being that their saga has always been single player.
But The Sims Online has already been launched in 2002, turning to be much of a failure. However with the new technologies, greater experience in MMO design, and concepts from TS3 it could work now, although i would EA to be a bit cautios about this.

Social. Freemium. Online. I think those are three things that could definitely apply to The Sims 4. Keep a close eye on how they do things with the new SimCity - EA has already mentioned that a lot of what SimCity does (like the requirement of needing to be online to play) will be shared by its games moving forward. SimCity increases the interaction between players by making cities more dependent on other online players, I can see The Sims adopting a similar model where you can invite friend sims into your town and house or go on adventures together. It wouldn't be an entirely online world like The Sims Online was, but a deeply integrated multiplayer aspect the game currently does not have.

The sims got boring when they started trying to make it too realistic.

The sims got boring when they started trying to make it too realistic.

In opposite, I am in fond of sim games. Because they give me an chance to experience the new life, which is impossible to happen in my real life.

The sims got boring when they started trying to make it too realistic.

I think the Sim behaviors are more realistic sure but the gameplay? Certainly doesn't force you to be realistic!