Most games, when they launch, experience an initial rush of sales that quickly tapers off to a steady tricky over time. If you’re a live service game, you’re lucky if you can keep your returning and new player numbers steady long-term. But The Sims 4 is currently dealing with the exact opposite of that trend: ten years after launch, it just brought in over 15 million new players in a year.
This comes from EA’s Q2 earnings, which released today. The 15 million figure is fairly shocking for a ten-year-old game, even given that the base game has been free-to-play since 2022. For some perspective, it took The Sims 4 four years after launch to reach 20 million unique players (this was back when it was a premium game). When it first went free-to-play, it gained a whopping 31 million new players out of the gate, and reached a total of 85 million as of May 2024. It’s not clear how exactly the 15 million gained lines up with the last count of 85 million to give us a new, current total, but that’s still a heck of a lot of people.
It helps that the game has improved significantly since its initial launch, which got a lukewarm reception for being rather thin on expected features at the time. In our re-review of The Sims 4 this year, we noted that while it’s starting to feel its age, “a strong community and frequent updates have kept it at the top of the life simulator genre.” And indeed, a regular cadence of expansion packs and ongoing commitment to technical and community support have helped it grow massively since its shift to free-to-play.
Meanwhile, it seems there’s no clear upcoming successor to replace The Sims 4 and slow this growth down. EA has clarified it has no plans for The Sims 5 at this time, and while its mysterious Project Rene is holding another invite-only playtest this fall, it still seems to be quite a ways off…and perhaps undergoing some pretty big changes.
EA also reported that the Madden and College Football franchises combined are on track to cross $1 billion in net bookings for the fiscal year ending March of 2025. For the quarter, EA reported $2.08 billion in net bookings, setting a new Q2 record, and $2.02 billion in net revenue. The company’s shared its outlook for the full year to be between $7.4 billion and $7.7 billion in net revenue, while its revenue outlook for Q3 is between $1.87 billion and $2.02 billion.
Contributing to that outlook is Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which launches at the end of this week and which we gave a 9/10, saying it “refreshes and reinvigorates this storied series with enjoyable action combat, a fantastic cast of companions, and moving character writing.”
EA expects to release one more game this year after Dragon Age, but it hasn’t announced it yet. Per its earnings slides, this is an “unannounced partner title.” Though there’s no way of knowing what this will be, it’s possible this will be the project recently teased by Hazelight Studios’ Josef Fares, a “new IP” under the EA Originals label that we only know to be an “all-new co-op adventure.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
