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The Sims turns 10 years old

Published on 5th February 2010 by Joe Martin

Will Wright's The Sims series has turned 10 years old today according to an announcement from EA.

Electronic Arts and Maxis have announced that The Sims has turned ten years old, having enjoyed an entire decade since the release of the first game in the series.

In that time The Sims franchise as a whole has sold more than 125 million copies and accumulated in excess of $2.5 billion USD in revenues for EA.

While The Sims is no longer overseen by series creator Will Wright, who has moved on to other things since the release of Spore, the series has continued to grow and do well. No matter what your thoughts are on the latest game, The Sims 3, there's no denying how successful it is - it has sold more than 4.5 million copies since launching last June.

The launch of The Sims 3 also saw the unveiling of The Sims 3 Exchange platform, through which nearly 110 million bits of content have been downloaded by users. The game has even seen a rather interesting port to the iPhone, complete with an online store of it's own.

The Sims 3 and the latest expansion pack, The Sims 3: World Adventures continue to sit in the top ten UK PC games sales chart too.

You can check out our The Sims 3 review for more information on the game, or let us know your thoughts in the forums.

12 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

Rkiver 5th February 2010, 13:30

Would it have sold as well if they sold it under it's original name I wonder? Dollhouse.

Gunsmith 5th February 2010, 13:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rkiver
Would it have sold as well if they sold it under it's original name I wonder? Dollhouse.

yeah but with that title comes expectations of blowing them up with fireworks

livenoise 5th February 2010, 13:38

110 millions bits? So that's 13750000 bytes... only 13Mb of stuff has been downloaded... is that all? ;oP

mjm25 5th February 2010, 13:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by livenoise
110 millions bits? So that's 13750000 bytes... only 13Mb of stuff has been downloaded... is that all? ;oP

+rep? on second thoughts, i don't want to encourage you.

matee 5th February 2010, 14:32

I could never understand what draws people to Sims. I find them absolutely useless and boring.

borandi 5th February 2010, 14:40

It's 6 year old girls who get attracted to this. Or like my ex, she'd recreate her friends and family. Then get bored and uninstall the game. A few months later, come back and recreate everyone. Then get bored (repeat ad nauseum)...

Kronenbourg1664 5th February 2010, 14:44

10 years and not a single good game yet. Just goes to show that with enough money the advertising view can sell people not only their own feaces but also the entire gross feaces of all the cows in India.

Veles 5th February 2010, 15:13

I enjoyed it back in the day but it's gotten a bit ridiculous now.

Sims 2 was a good build on the franchise, even if it was partly just a set up so they could re-release a load of expansion packs from the first game, but the third game, the third was pretty terrible IMO.

l3v1ck 5th February 2010, 15:25

The last good sim game was Sim City 2000.

dicobalt 5th February 2010, 16:04

I would like a Sim City 5 that plays true to the history of the series. None of that Sim City Societies junk.

Farfalho 5th February 2010, 16:53

Sims is such a rubbish thing. If you want to have that kind of life, try to go out side for a second, it might suprise you

praxis22 5th February 2010, 17:55

This is one of those topics where somebody asks a question and almost everyone responds with, "but why..." etc.

How comes the delete key doesn't work right in OSX (It does, get used to it)
How can can you enable rsh in UNIX/Linux (why not use SSH?)
I'm moving to X as Y sucks (please stay/you suck)

Given the bulk of the user base is female I suspect that if it were called "Dollhouse" it would have sold more initially. I've been playing it for most of that 10 years, though it would be more honest to say I've been watching sims walk about in the houses I build for them and telling to clean up after themselves and do their homework, for 9.5 years, and actually playing the game for maybe 6 months, if that.

You may equally ask why so few people play FPS games online, at least compared to the 125 Mn sims games sold/played.