I think EA has already officially announced that The Sims 4 is in development. Now, if we can assume history will repeat itself, there seems to be about 5 years in between games. Therefore, I think The Sims 4 will be released sometime in 2014.
Anyone care to speculate what it will be like?
I have a few ideas for things I'd like to see:
- Create-an-Animation tool: allows you to script custom animations for your Sims. This will also allow you to make custom objects and then create the animations that will go with those objects. This could be extremely complex, but would allow for amazing customization.
- Vehicles/traffic that are actually functional (e.g. so it will be possible for cars to collide with each other, etc).
- "Ambitions" style professions should be built into the main game, not a separate expansion. "Rabbit holes" could still be used for jobs that aren't that interesting (e.g. office work).
- Use of Nvidia PhysX for modelling things like the Sims' clothing (imagine clothes that actually moved realistically and separate from the Sims' bodies! That would look amazing).
- It will probably never happen, but I'd like to see more realistic, real life challenges in the game (e.g. diseases, disabilities, crime, poverty, addictions, etc). They will probably not go this route to maintain the "teen" audience appeal, but adding stuff like that could really take The Sims to a whole new level.
- Weather and seasons should be part of the main game, not an expansion.
This is all just speculation, EA has not released any details of what the game will be like.
Anyway, these are just my ideas! Let's hear what you'd like to see!