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The Sims Franchise Fun Facts

A family of overachievers

The original The Sims™ was the best-selling PC game worldwide in 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003, until it was dethroned by its own sequel The Sims™ 2, which was the best-selling PC game of 2004, and the second best selling PC game of 2005. In October 2006, The Sims™ 2 Pets was the most successful expansion pack in franchise history, ranking in spots 1 or 2 of the PC game charts for more than 3 months. In 2007, the franchise dominated the top ten charts claiming four of the ten spots including The Sims 2 Seasons Expansion pack at number 3 along with The Sims™ 2, The Sims™ 2 Bon Voyage, and The Sims™ 2 Pets. In 2008, The Sims had three games on the charts with The Sims™ 2 Double Deluxe, The Sims™ 2 FreeTime and The Sims™ 2 Apartment Life. And in June of 2009, The Sims™ 3 sold a whopping 1.4 million units in its first week making it the biggest PC launch in EA’s history and now the worldwide best-selling PC game of 2009!
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A worldwide phenomenon

The Sims franchise has fans around the globe with combined sales for the franchise topping 125 million!

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Blockbuster Entertainment

The Sims franchise has grossed more than 2.5 billion dollars, putting it on par with some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters, such as The Matrix trilogy (1.4 billion), Titanic (1.84 billion) and Avatar (1.86 billion) —the top grossing movie of all time at the box office.

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Celebrities Love The Sims

In the mix of Sims fans from around the world, famous actors, TV personalities, and musicians have shown their support for The Sims over the years. From attending parties, lending their voice stylings to the games, spoofing the games on TV shows, or just professing their adoration, celebs know how to get their game on.

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Making news

The Sims was the first and only video game franchise to make the cover of Newsweek! Since then, The Sims franchise has graced over four dozen covers to date with a total of 36 for The Sims 3 alone.

Fun that translates

The Sims 2 has been translated into more than 22 languages including Swedish, Thai and Russian and is available in over 60 countries worldwide!

A language that doesn’t

Sims speak Simlish, an emotion-filled language that defies translation. In creating Simlish, the development team experimented with fractured Ukrainian and Tagalog, the language of the Philippines. Inspired by the code talkers of WWII, Sims creator Will Wright also suggested Navajo. Over the years, fans have learned to recognize some words like dag dag for hello and nooboo for baby.

Funny Money

The Sims have their own form of currency called Simoleans. The currency originated way back in early eighteenth-century Britain, where sixpence were often slangily called a simon. Simon mixed with the much more valuable French gold coins called Napoleans became Simoleans! And, what more appropriate currency for The Sims!

Hot tracks

Rock Stars like Simlish too! Soundtracks for The Sims games read like a who’s who of chart-topping talent; The Black Eyed Peas, Nelly Furtado, Katy Perry, Leann Rimes, Natasha Bedingfield, the Pussycat Dolls and Depeche Mode have recorded their chart topping hits in Simlish.

Play from the comfort of your living room

Kick back and enjoy playing The Sims from your couch! Various The Sims games are available on PlayStation®2 computer entertainment system, the Xbox® video game system from Microsoft, the Nintendo GameCube™, the Game Boy® Advance, the Nintendo DS™, Nintendo Wii™, and the PSP® (PlayStation®Portable). It’s also available on mobile phones including the iPhone!

Drop in for a download
Imagine having the entire city of San Francisco drop by each week for a visit. That’s close to what’s happening at The Sims 3 official community site, www.thesims3.com. The site receives about 6 million unique visitors each month. There are more than 300 content downloads every minute and more than 110 million downloads to date for The Sims 3 alone. Over 1.7 million uploads have been made to date and that includes 20 movies uploaded every hour!

It’s all about the hair

Over the years, the most popular downloaded content is hair, with over 670,000 downloads to date. The most popular style is female, long and wavy.

It started with a toilet

The first object ever created for The Sims was a toilet featured in the 1993 prototype. A variety of ways to interact with the toilet were introduced, from using it to cleaning it. According to the team, it was also the only object in the original game that different genders used differently—the men tended to leave the seat up!

The Sims go green

With the release of The Sims 3 in 2009, Sims can now be environmentally friendly. Not only can they live entirely off the land by growing their own food, but they can also reduce pollution by riding their bike to work.

Hello neighbor!

In 2009, for the first time ever Sims can leave their homes with no loading screens and wander the neighborhood. Sims can go to the town square, ride their bikes to the beach and take a jaunt to the gym.

It’s A Material World

The Sims finally get their materialistic fix in 2006 with must have stuff to decorate, redesign or dress up new outfits. To date, there have been nine stuff packs which included items for your family, holiday, mansion, garden and of course, glamorous life.

Name Brand Envy

In 2008, nearly 1,000 H&M stores worldwide featured a garment designed by a player of The Sims for anyone to purchase. EA released the H&M Fashion stuff pack, making Sims the trendiest on the block.

Home is where the heart is

IKEA® and The Sims collaborated in 2008 to make home the most important place on earth in The Sims with real-world IKEA home furnishings for the living spaces, bedroom and home office in your Sims’ homes.

Social!

With the launch of The Sims 3, Sims fans are online like never before with a Facebook page, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube. All together, The Sims have more than a million friends online worldwide. That’s enough to fill up the largest stadium in the world, Rungrado May Day Stadium in North Korea, over four times. You can also play with your Sims in a new way with teaser experiences like SimSidekick, SimSocial and SimFriend.

Play it your way!

The appeal of The Sims is that there is no “right way” to play. Some players spend all their time building cool houses or following the personal lives of their Sims, while others like to create chaos wherever they go. Are you one of those players? If you have ever removed the pool ladder after sending your Sim in for a dip, then the answer is probably yes!

The Sims in Real Life

In 2004, EA Benelux created a real glass house where a family lived out their life for all to see in true The Sims style.

Before there was bird flu

Will Wright once introduced a mysterious virus to The Sims. As infection spread throughout the game, so did lively debate on the message boards. What was the source of the illness? Players finally traced it back to pet guinea pigs and shared tips for surviving the outbreak.

Feeling needy?

Like most of us, the Sims have aspirations, fears and needs. The model used in the game was inspired by “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.” According to Maslow people’s needs are based on a hierarchy and once basic needs are satisfied, people are motivated by less urgent needs.

Stamp of approval

The French love The Sims so much that the French postal service issued an official postal stamp honoring the game. For that, we say, “Merci!”

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