It’s hard to believe that there’s been more than eight years of EA supporting The Sims 4 as well as their insane amount of expansions. It also appears that we’ve come to a head with that title, as developer Maxis is prepared to move on to a new business. That new business is more of the same thing, as the studio held a special half hour event on YouTube dubbed Behind The Sims Summit, in which they unveiled a brand new title in development, going by the codename “The Sims Project Rene.”
This “Project Rene” is most likely the temporary title for what will eventually become the next entry in the franchise, The Sims 5. The project will have both solo and collaborative play, as well as cross-play through various systems. Maxis showed a very early build of the project, which consisted of the bare-bone technical systems. This includes both building and customization by showing taking apart a bed manually and decorating a couch with a specific pillow.
This is potentially an entire new feature for The Sims that will allow players to have an even more robust and customizable setup for their Sim’s homes. Speaking of which, we didn’t get to see any actual Sims in this demo, but it’s more than likely that when Maxis is ready, they’ll unveil them to us. That day, however, will not be coming anytime soon as the project is still very early in the development cycle with the development planning to go through the “next few years” before we’ll have some more concrete information.
No need to fret though, Maxis is still planning on supporting The Sims 4, which just went free-to-play this week. They’re also planning an additional two expansions for 2023, adding to the already insane plethora of content.