So I spoke with an employee of EA Sims 3 team today..

[DreadWizardDM]

Hello all, I know I do not post very often but have been a member of the sims /1/2/3 community since about 2005. 

Anyway, I had a chance to speak to an actual project developer today who works on the sims 3 team at EA.  We basically shot the bull for a few and I told him about the "pudding heads" and we both got a laugh.  We also both admitted to playing sims games in our spare time, he admitted that EA is working on a significant way to address this issue.

 I prodded a bit and he finally confided that they are going to really upgrade CAS, get rid of the pure pudding and add around a dozen more sliders as well as more looks customization.  Me being a businessman myself began to think to myself that sales must be in the toilet.. at least for a mega company like EA and a mega brand game title like the Sims franchise.

Hope this little morsel of information gives some hope to fellow fans on the Sims.

[Carlwashere]

Hmm... Really?
Makes me want to reinstall Sims 3. 
Sounds like a nice little update.

[Hammie]

Oh, that'd be nice. No more pudding wrath! Maybe next they can work on better in game cameras. I really wish Mr. GunMod was still making his fabulous camera mods.  I uninstalled my Sims 3 after only playing it for a week.

[Paden]

Uh huh. I will believe it when they overhaul the whole damn thing. Sorry, just paranoid like that, can't help it.

[Nonni]

I confess if what you say becomes reality, DreadWizard, I might take another look at Sims 3. I haven't uninstalled it but I rarely play it. To me the Pudding people are way too inbred and need to have their gene pool enlarged. There you have it, my 2 pennies.

[Paden]

Personally, I lean towards adding chlorine to their gene pool, but that's just me and my mood right now.

[Supernatural_Vixen]

They really should look into making a Sims 3 Version of Body Shop

[Nonni]

They really should look into making a Sims 3 Version of Body Shop

I second that notion.

Personally, I lean towards adding chlorine to their gene pool, but that's just me and my mood right now.

that could work, too.

[kaoz666]

To further DreamWizard's post as far as EA's fiscal earnings for 2009, seeing as I work in the gaming industry myself and generally like to stay on top of the business end of the industry, I can confirm that EA games took a heavy, HEAVY blow with the loses regarding TS3. They tried to trump it up with their failed PR campaign over the summer, but the fact of the matter is that TS3 and the subsequent EP World Adventures did abysmally as far as sales compared to the last TS2 Ep, Apartment Life. Add to that the fact that them initially stating the game being able to be run on older rigs being total horse poop, during a recession no less when NO ONE is trying to plunk out an extra $200+ for a new GFX card just to play one game...and that hurt the sales as well. And how many actual TS3 commercials or advertisement have you seen lately, if at all? Yes, they ran TV spots when the base game and WA came out, but have you seen the spots on networks since? Nope. Why is that? Because it costs them money, and it makes no sense to make an ad blitz for a product that's not selling.

Thankfully for EA they have tons more IPs (Intellectual Properties) that did do well over 2009, such as the EA Sports line up of games and Need For Speed: Shift that the hit they took for TS3 pretty much goes unnoticed to the untrained eye. I'm not one of those untrained eyes though. So from what DreamWizard says, it makes perfect sense that EA plans on doing damage control in house, and has plans to improve the game without the media explosion they tried when the base game came out. Cuz we see how well that worked for them. It's bad enough most of the stuff that actually makes TS3 playable (and enjoyable) is user generated content, modifications and add ons. In a nutshell, the community made EA look really...reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally bad. Because the community took it upon themselves to fix what EA either didn't or couldn't fix. And rightly so seeing as the people who actually made TS3 weren't Maxis, but another development house that were handed the keys to one of EA's most lucrative IPs and damn near ran it into the ground. It wouldn't surprise me if they have former Maxis developers on the books now spearheading the potential re-up of TS3. But sadly I believe the damage is done. Much like the game Bayonetta for the PS3 and 360. The 360 version was flawless, the PS3 version was glitchy and buggy beyond playability. Sega has recently addressed the PS3 bugs with a patch, but people have already moved on. Same case with TS3 and EA. So many people got put off from it that they've returned back to TS2 or moved on to something else completely. Any chances of EA getting those people back are slim to nil. Best case scenario for them is to fix what they can and market to the people who stuck to TS3 even with it's short comings. Trying to attracted new users as they did initially is a recipe for disaster.

They have a chance to salvage the game in 2010 at the least to cover the 2009 losses. But EA needs to tread lightly, otherwise they may as well cancel any plans for a Sims 4. I've been a gamer long enough to know and see good game series die slow, agonizing deaths because the developers and publishers get greedy and lose sight of who really matters, the users. (Anyone remember Duke Nukem, Gex and Sly Cooper? Need I say more.)

[Carlwashere]

I completely agree. When I noticed that the Maxis logos were slowing disappearing off TS2 EPs and SPs, I was just thinking what they were going to do with TS3.
It's not a bad game, not at all in my opinion, but it doesn't have that addictive appeal that TS2 has had since it was base game for me. I still liked it better than TS3 base game. Especially for 5 years ago. TS3 has potential though, it honestly does. I bought a new graphics card just a few months prior to getting TS3 (for TS2 ironically).
I just hope they try and attempt to keep the series going. There's no other series like it.

[Nonni]

Does anyone from EA troll through the different Sim sites? Seems like it would pay them to see the feedback. (EA - hint! hint!)

I suppose new development takes several months. It doesn't pay in the long run to rush a new product out to market.

Oh, wait... It's too late. That ship has sailed.

[MaryH]

EA would have to do a massive overhaul (not just CAS and body shapes) to make the Sims 3 appealing to more people.
They would have to fix all the bugs, all of the problems with memory and game lag. They would have to fix it so that it would play as it is intended to. They would also have to change the entire scenario of "rpg" play to eliminate things like that first EP they put out. They should have listened more to the players and less to their marketing people for input to the game's design.
They want more customers to buy it? Fix it first, then redesign it. That's the only way they will regain any credibility with the other Sims 2 fans who will not touch it with a ten-foot pole. I'm one, and I will remain one until they do all of those things-and then I might even consider thinking about purchasing it.
Oh, and one more thing-dump that Store, yesterday. Nickel and diming your customers is not the best way to impress them.

[kaoz666]

I totally agree with the points made following my post. I also believe like Carlwashere that TS3 does have potential. But as it's own game, not a follow up to TS2. That it isn't. It's only a sims game to me personally by name alone. And I'm also on the same boat as Nonni and MaryH in that I, even though I see potential with it, and am impressed by the mods such people as Pescado and Delphy have made to improve it, still am not convinced to add it to my library. When TS2 came out, I had to have it. When TS3 came out, It didn't even register on my "game to get radar". When you take a step back like that in a franchise, it hurts. And suffice to say, while Maxis weren't exactly patron saints, they at least had a beat on what the community at large wanted.

It's a classic scenario of "you never know what you have until it's gone." For as badly as we (especially myself over the years) trashed Maxis, they would have done a far better job making TS3 then Visceral Games, the developers responsible for it. But now that the hooplah over the game's basic failure has seemed to subside, it makes sense for them to go back and completely fix everything from the axles up. It benefits those who stuck with the game despite what it lacked, which is a whole lot when you compare it to it's predecessor. 

[roerzman]

I know what I've got because it isn't gone. There's no way that Maxis can con me into buying that other tripe unless they do a total rebuild of those puddings and make them look as or even more attractive than the characters in Sims2.

[Nonni]