Love it or hate it, The Sims as a series remains one of the most popular in the world. Beating even Blizzard's World of Warcraft, it has sold over 100 million copies worldwide, making it the best selling video game franchise of all time. The next installment of the series, The Sims 3, is due for release sometime in June and has recently gone gold. With all development finished and the game now released to manufacturing, EA will get to see if their next Sims title will live up to the obviously high expectations it has.
This is the first game in the series that is not developed by Maxis but instead by EA Redwood Shores and EA Black Box. Maxis had definitely brought a lot of experience to the development process and helped the publishing giant produce several blockbuster games, including Spore. Thus, many people have wondered whether or not EA can pull it off with their own teams. Will Sims 3 be just as big as the ones before it? Or will it mark a turn for the worse, with EA milking the series until the end?