EAs Groundbreaking Franchise The Sims Turns Ten

February 4, 2010

EA’s
Groundbreaking Franchise The Sims Turns Ten

World’s Most Popular Virtual
Neighborhood Celebrates a Decade of Simulation, Innovation and Reinvention

The EA Play Label of Electronic Arts
Inc. announces the celebration of the ten year anniversary of The Sims, the
groundbreaking game that allowed players to create and live a virtual, simulated
life on a computer. Since the original The Sims debut on February 4, 2000, the
unstoppable, award-winning franchise has produced three core games – The Sims,
The Sims 2, and The Sims 3 – supported by dozens of expansion and stuff packs
with lifetime unit sales eclipsing 125 million worldwide. As the best-selling PC
game* in nearly every major video game market worldwide, The Sims has
continuously reset the bar over the past decade delivering new content, gameplay
elements, platform support, and partnerships that resonate with its global fan
base in meaningful ways and take the play experience to new levels of fun and
entertainment.

“The success of The Sims is
something gamers and the gaming business as a whole can be proud of. With its
charming and quirky style, lovely emergent game mechanics and user created
creativity that delights every day, The Sims is a game that can be enjoyed by
everybody and reflects what you put into it,” explained Rod Humble, Head of the
EA Play label. “The future of The Sims is going to be a lot of fun; it is rare
for an entertainment franchise to be gaining momentum a decade after release, so
this is a particularly pleasant moment for everyone who has worked on the
games.”

“No other game in the history of
electronic entertainment has ever had the broad, nearly universal appeal of The
Sims franchise,” said Logan Decker, Editor-in-Chief of PC Gamer magazine.
“Everybody plays it: hardcore gamers, young women, celebrities, conservatives,
professors, soldiers, grandmothers, even people who say they don’t like computer
games. And the game—or, rather, the experience—has thrived throughout ten years
of sequels and countless expansion packs because EA has kept the environment
fresh and infinitely customizable while never getting in the way of the game’s
primary focus—the player’s imagination and the natural inclination of all human
beings to create meaningful stories.”

Just how popular is The Sims?

The franchise has generated more
than $2.5B of revenue, putting it in the same class as blockbuster films Avatar,
Titanic, and The Matrix Trilogy.

The Sims, available in 60 countries
and 22 languages, remains a worldwide cultural touchstone for its enormous and
growing fan base by continuing to evolve its content and remain current. Since
its June 2009 launch, The Sims 3 has sold more than 4.5 million units worldwide
to date and holds the #1 best-selling PC title for 2009 in North America and
Europe*. The Sims 3, like its predecessors, allows players to create, download
and share player content on its online exchange fueling nearly 110 million
downloads for The Sims 3 alone in a matter of months. The Sims 3 community site
alone, www.TheSims3.com, welcomes up to six million unique visitors monthly,
handles 300 content downloads every minute and more than 1.8 million uploads
have been made to date, including 20 movies each hour. The Sims 3 App for iPhone
and iPod touch became the top selling game on the App Store for 2009 and reached
the #1 position in the top paid Apps in nearly 40 countries worldwide in the
same year.**

What does it feel like to host 6
million visitors each month?

Invite the entire city of San
Francisco to drop by your house and you’ll get the gist.

Social networking sites play a
significant role in the ongoing popularity of The Sims with pages on Facebook,
MySpace, Twitter and YouTube, amassing a following of a million friends to date
worldwide. That’s enough people to fill the world’s largest stadium, North
Korea’s Rungrado May Day Stadium, more than four times. The Sims 3 YouTube
Channel is the second most subscribed to sponsored channel of all time with
nearly 55,000 subscribers and over 26 million video views. Through social
networks, The Sims development team shares the latest news and content, hosts
contests and showcases player creations, and provides answers to game-related
questions.

Sims are the trendiest virtual
people on the block.

In 2008, nearly 1,000 H&M stores
worldwide featured a garment designed by a player of The Sims for purchase, and
real-world IKEA home furnishings could be used to decorate living spaces and
more with the releases of The Sims 2 H&M Fashion Stuff and The Sims 2 IKEA® Home
Stuff packs.

The Sims has continued to hold
magnetic appeal because it is relevant, quirky, edgy, and fun; it’s a microcosm
of society. The games give players the ability to create and control another
life for themselves complete with relationships, children, homes, travel,
business and pure entertainment.

If the games were buried in a time
capsule, when unearthed in 100 years, The Sims would give future generations an
instant understanding of how people lived between 2000 – 2010. For example,
music would come alive from blockbuster recording artists such as The Black Eyed
Peas, Nelly Furtado, Katy Perry, Natasha Bedingfield and Depeche Mode, all of
whom have recorded songs for various The Sims games in Simlish, the official
language of The Sims.

The popular franchise has also kept
pace with societal trends such as “going green” with The Sims 3 allowing players
to live off the land, grow their own food and or use pedal power or a Toyota
Prius to travel, all in an effort to reduce their personal carbon Sim
footprints.

For more information about The Sims,
visit http://thesims.ea.com/.

 

* According to NPD data, Chart-track
UK, Gfk France, Gfk Spain, Gfk-MCC Germany and EA internal estimate

** iTunes 2009 Rewind