EA'S push to sell more stuff
It's not your imagination, Sims players: EA has pushed out more stuff for players to buy than ever before. Many players feel like EA is trying to milk the franchise for all it's worth. Personally I suspect that the more stuff they put out there, the less anyone will end up buying.
The latest release is Sunlit Tides. I follow Sims news pretty closely, and even I didn't understand that this was a standalone town (world) until today. Like Lucky Palms (released June 2012), Lunar Lakes (released February 2012), and Barnacle Bay (September 2010) Sunlit Tides is a stand-alone live-in world (i.e. not a vacation world) that you can buy for your Sims to move to, if you have grown tired of the towns that ship with the game.
It's difficult to figure out how the EA producers are justifying these stand-alone worlds. After all, if you buy an expansion pack, it comes with a new world. Pets came with Appaloosa Plains, Supernatural will come with Moonlight Falls (September 2012), and Seasons will surely include a town as well.
The real issue is that the stand-alone towns cost about $25, while the expansion packs cost about $40. Why pay so much for a stand-alone town, when you can buy an expansion pack for just a little bit more? And Lucky Palms raised the bar in terms of pricing: it comes in two levels, Basic and Gold. Gold level includes many premium items, but costs a staggering $38.
The same dual-level pricing holds for Sunlit Tides, as well. The Standard version costs "only" $24.50. But the Gold version costs $43.50 - although it is currently on sale for "only" $37.00.
To make it worse, these prices are all in SimPoints. You can't just buy Sunlit Tides for $37, you have to buy $40 worth of SimPoints and then you end up with $3 in change - in SimPoints.
I don't mind supporting the development of a game I know and love. I certainly don't begrudge EA the ability to make money off the game. But considering it is one of the world's bestselling game titles, how much do they really have to milk that cow in order to be able to make ends meet? Barnacle Bay cost around $12 when it was first released, if memory serves, and that felt about right. But these Gold level towns actually cost more than a full-on expansion pack, but without all the cool additional gameplay. When will players decide that "enough is enough" and stop buying all the extra content?