I said pessimistic not so much because of what Sims3 may be like. We don't really know yet. A lot of the hyped features sound to me like the old features slightly enhanced.

I am pessimistic because I think the company is moving away from the Sims mods fanbase, which is the draw for me. My reason for thinking so? The new EA store is a micropayment system. I think they hope to make that the main or possibly only source of new content, and I suppose I can't blame them for trying, but if it eventually replaces stuff packs, they are going to charge you more per item. It will be much more expensive. You can add it up yourself. Also it means for the first time individual modders who make a single new bed will be directly competing with Maxis and since EA will be charging for each item individually...are they really going to allow primarily free distribution of items much better than they can produce? I don't see them continuing to encourage that when they start making sales per item. I guess they could license pay sites, since pay sites don't provide most of their items for free and they could get a cut of not much, but sites like this one, I think they will begin to thwart. I think if they have the Exchange at all, it will probably be recolors only. If they keep supporting modders, it will hurt their store. How optimistic are we they will under those business conditions?

All that makes me pessimistic, but I am also pessimistic about customer relations as revealed during the Securom controversy. They have been reading the stories about people having to buy new hardware, and they have committed to using it in Sims3 anyway. I am really not that tempted and I think some other people aren't.