14 DAY TRIAL // What we know: The Sims 4 is being developed by Maxis and The Sims Studio and will be published on the PC at first in the fall of this year.
The teams working on the life simulation have pretty big plans for the fourth full installment in the franchise and are aiming to create virtual humans with a complex emotional system that can react in many of the same ways that real people do.
The Sims 4 is designed to allow characters to experience a much wider variety of emotions and even negative periods will be important for the future development of their skills and their life ambitions.
The studios involved with the game also wants to allow Sims to perform two actions at the same time, like walking while talking with another character or doing something else with their hands.
More information will probably be offered once the title is nearer to its launch date.
Given the significant popularity of the series and the expanding user base for both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, it’s likely that The Sims 4 will also get a next-gen version at some point after the PC launch.
Why it matters: The Sims 3 was a smash hit for Electronic Arts, despite the fact that it had some performance issues on many PCs and that too much downloadable content was launched to extract more money from core fans.
The sequel needs to deliver at least one major improvement, which seems to be the new emotional system, in order to keep the fan base happy.
The problem is that Maxis has already squandered a lot of good will after the launch of the rebooted SimCity and The Sims 4 needs to be quite exceptional to keep the reputation of the studio intact.
The full list of Incoming 2014 Games articles can be read on Softpedia.