Until now there has been nothing but rumors about The Sims 5 and little elsethe long-awaited but as-yet-unconfirmed remake of The Sims, Maxis’ smash hit that first released in the early 2000s (yes, it’s been that long) and whose most recent iteration, The Sims 4, turned eight years early last year September, although today Electronic Arts continues to publish new content frequently (for a fee, yes).

And why did I say The Sims 5 is already in the works but not yet confirmed? a few hours ago there was an online event called Behind The Sims Summit , in its first edition, which spent half an hour reviewing the present and future of The Sims with updates related to The Sims 4, The Sims for Mobile and their entire ecosystem. It was celebrated today because, as has been known for some time, The Sims 4 has become a free-to-play game on all platforms as of today, and according to the developer, it will be free-to-play forever. The base game, yes, the content I mentioned above is and will be paid.

Although much of the less than 30-minute event was devoted to the current generation, during the final minutes of the video, which you can see here, the leadership role has passed to Project Rene, which the company itself defines as “The next iteration of The Sims”. Granted, The Sims 5 is never specifically mentioned in the video, but of course either this new iteration is a new release, or Electronic Arts considers the current model of The Sims exhausted (which seems unlikely) and intends to create a new design for the game. I definitely bet on the first option.

So be it, for now Project Rene has come a long way as they have clarified that it is in the early stages of development, and therefore it will be necessary to wait a few more years for its arrival on the market. At the moment, the company would be working on aspects related to customization (which is little that was seen at the event), but the plans are much more ambitious, as they point to, quote, «fundamentally evolving the way Sims think and behave, how players create and customize their worlds, and innovate in entirely new ways«.

When it comes to customizing the environment, and as we saw in the video, everything looks very promising because the process personalization in the detail of the bed and sofa, in which we saw color changes, piecemeal adjustments, pattern application, and so on. For those who like to spend hours and hours (not to mention days, weeks or lifetimes) designing their homes piece by piece, this can be the ultimate experience.

Another aspect we got a chance to see is that while it will be thinking about the game itself (it would be crazy to do without it), it will also focus on online play, maximum use of the game cross platform, that is, players can communicate with each other regardless of the platform they use to play. In this respect, we could see how two devices, a PC and a smartphone, participated simultaneously in the design of the same space.

We will have to wait a little longer, as stated earlier, at least a few years according to EA-Maxis official statementthough early access testing is also mentioned, so maybe we won’t have to wait that long before we start getting a lot more information about Project Rene, which, I don’t know about you, but in my head that already means The Sims 5.