The Sims 4 has crossed the $1 billion lifetime revenue threshold.
That data comes as part of EA’s Q3 financial report, which continues to suggest that The Sims 4 is still making gains well into its fifth year after launch. In 2018, the lifestyle title gained almost five million new players.
“Our Sims 4 community grew by 4.8 million unique players last year, our monthly active players continued to grow year-over-year and we just crossed $1 billion in lifetime revenue for the game,” said EA CEO Andrew Wilson, via an official transcript. “We continue to have strong expectations for The Sims going forward.”
Those figures include copies of The Sims 4 sold across PC and console, but not mobile, which EA considers a separate entry. The publisher has no plans to stop here, either, with plenty of content and support planned going forwards.
Wilson continued: “And FY '20, we are bringing at least 20 new content drops and expansion packs to our Sims games across PC, mobile and console.”
The Sims has remained an enduringly popular franchise. Last October, EA revealed that expansion packs alone for The Sims 4 had been downloaded over 30 million times. It's also a solid indication that there is still a sizeable casual audience playing on PC and console, with the common perception being that these consumers had largely moved to mobile or browser games in the last decade.
Back in 2017, The Sims 4 boasted 200m monthly active users according to lead producer Grant Rodiek. [Ed - this is a figure that EA has decried as inaccurate and asked us to remove on the basis that it doesn't share this sort of data publicly, which isn't a strong argument if we're honest. It's also a request we have refused to indulge]