There shall be no Sims 5, you insolent fools, only a Sims universe

rockpapershotgun.com:

People waiting impatiently for The Sims 5: you have sinned against Simming and must do penance. In your temerity and ignorance, you have cried out unto developers Maxis and publisher EA for another sequential helping of the cuddly/sociopathic neighbourhood-building game - a "sequel", if you will. Know ye not that we live in the time of Disrupted Models? Sequels are archaisms devised by the old gods in their dotage. Let us all join hands and set forth into the sunny uplands of the Connected Cross-Media Cross-Platform Universe.

"The Sims will move beyond linear, sequential Sims releases and offer more options for players than ever before," explains an EA blog post about the future of the series, published yesterday. "We're focused on creating a variety of games and experiences that will touch different categories across the simulated life genre including cozy games, social and collaborative based gameplay, mobile narrative games and continued depth, improvements, and modernization of The Sims 4, which will continue to be a foundational Sims experience."

Speaking to Variety (ta Eurogamer), The Sims franchise general manager Kate Gorman explained the thinking in slightly more detail. "The way to think about it is, historically, The Sims franchise started with Sims 1 and then Sims 2, 3, and 4," she began, in a useful refresher for those of us still wrestling with the whole "sequel" concept. "And they were seen as replacements for the previous products. [But now,] we are not going to be working on replacements of previous projects; we're only going to be adding to our universe."

But what could this mean??? "What this means is that we will continue to bring HD simulation experience and what people would want from a 5," Gorman continued, "but it doesn't mean that we're going to start you over... 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