Camlon

While it is true that development cost has been skyrocketing, it doesn't need to be that way. You don't need 5 million sales to make a decent profit. Paradox Interactive have made profit on games which has sold 300K copies. And its not too weird if you think about it. To make cities skylines they have about 10 employees, and lets assume they get paid 100K dollars a year for 3 years. The total employee cost will then be 3 million dollars. But if you sell 2 million copies for a profit of 30 dollars each. (talking about simcity now) then you will earn 60 million dollars. The problem is not that city building games cost too much to develop, the problem is that EA is wasting resources. 1. Not a significant factor compared to other factors 2. Actually it is cheap, I remember I saw advertisments in stores for sim city 2013. You won't find that for Cities Skylines. Their type of marketing is cheap, but also very smart. For instance they let a lot of youtubers play their games and upload videos. 3. So, pretty much the same as what physical stores take from EA. They also don't need to think about production cost. 4. They are not among featured items, they are however in the top sales list. 5. That is similar to many other game companies, and it doesn't really matter. It just means the profit will be shared among two organizations. Most people don't wait for a sale. And currently CIties Skylines is the top seller on steam. I expect them to at least sell one million. That will give them a decent profit and name recognition.

Its not due to commute times, as NAM makes commuters travel any distance. Forget about subway, it won't make a difference. Your problem is lack of jobs for high wealth citizens. You have massive demand for industry, and high demand for commercial. Do something about it and your abandonment problems will disappear.

We are so entitled that we choose to play Sim City 4 instead Or maybe it was just a poor game, and that's why people are complaining. And maybe the reason the complaints of Sim City 4 was "puppy dogs and rainbows compared to the vitriol spewed forth now" is because while Sim City 4 had issues, the original version was fundamentally a good game that was a huge improvement from Sim City 3000. Sim City 4 had regions, superior terraforming, far superior graphics, more dynamic models than Sim City 3000. What does Sim City 2013 have, a flawed glassbox?

It has crashed occasionally, but not very often. It is very annoying when it happens because I forget to save and lose hours of progress.

Seems to me this topic was posted two years ago. I am sure he has solved his problem by now

I think the easiest way is this. Build up your city to low residential demand, and place all the dirty and manufacturing industry in a neighbor. When the sims are getting more uneducated then both of them will drop negative and you will get demand from hi-tech. Hence, when you build industry then only high-tech show up. Much better than trying to tax them away, but end up with unemployment because you are suppressing demand.

Hey guys, you should try out Sim City 4. it might not have the 3D or glassbox, but it is a game that last. No reason to play a broken game, when we got Sim City 4. I have had it for many years, and I am still playing it.

The demand in the game is a little bit messed up, and you will often get residential demand even if there is no jobs. But from what I see you still have demand for Co-$$ and Co-$$$ and you have massive demand for I-M. Remember, rich people do not just work at $$$, they may also work at lower wealth. If you want to avoid unemployment you will need to keep demand for industry at commerce at near 0. Also, I can assure it has nothing to do with distance. Under NAM the max allowable commute times are so long they will travel back and forward on a big map many times.

In SC4 the sims don't really care if there is jobs for them or not. They will come if you have demand for them, and in the beginning you always do. But after a while with no jobs they will leave again. Remember that public services also provide jobs. However, that is very different from SC2013 where you can sustain a city with no jobs and grow a 200K city (30K city). In Sim City 4 you will have a hard time getting anything more than a 1000. Hi, I built an all R and C city, and got up to 400K sims, but then I experienced heavy traffic problems. Although I upgraded roads, put bus stops every where, used the street-car wherever I could, yet it did'nt help. So now, because of the traffic problems, fire trucks do'nt get to fire on time (although the said they fixed this problem on the 1.7 patch), so I loose buildings, doze them, and new sims come over and build again. This scenario repeat itself, and my city moves between 390K to 405K sims. I know that I have to solve the traffic problems, but yet, did not find how. Any ideas ? Bulldoze the Commercial areas and replace them with parks.

The game is not perfect, that's why. Its not a big deal as it does not lead to huge increases in commute times. They don't walk on the other side of the road because they are programmed like cars. It would require a lot of extra programming to have a different transportation control for pedestrians.

My bet would be low land value. With high land value and high demand you are going to get tall buildings. I have build cities with only small amount of residential, and I still get tall buildings. In fact it is often easier to get only tall buildings in those smaller cities.

I would have no problems paying that amount, and I bet most of the people who say "no" here would still pay for it if they are unable to get a pirated copy. Its not like its very much money. Even in China for white collar workers, it is a weekly salary. In western countries it is 1-2 days of work. That's worth it if it will give me thousands of hours of gameplay.

To be able to sell DLCs you need to first have an enjoyable game and a huge player base. They can make as many DLCs as they want for Sim City Societies, but it won't lead to any revenue. There is nothing wrong with DLCs and you can earn a lot of money from it. Sims 3 is an example of that. Its a quite enjoyable game, and has a lot of DLCs that you can download. However, if you release a bad game then people are not going to buy DLCs to fix it. So I still hold the statement. If EA valued their shareholders, they would release better games.

If they valued their shareholders, they would release better games. EA has been way too short term focused. In the short term releasing mediocre rushed games is very beneficial. It will cut down on costs, and sales will be almost the same. However in the long term it causes problems. Some of these intended mediocre games are going to be absolutely terrible, as games tend to be worse than expected. That will often destroy the whole series. For instance Sim City Socities flopped, but it did have some sales. They released an expansion and it was a total financial failure. EA needs to get a more long term perspective.

Yes, how dare the creators and owners of that franchise do something with it that displeases the fans! How dare they trying to innovate and come up with something new! Preposterous! How is removing subway innovation? How is forcing users to deal with a weak server innovation? How is smaller maps innovation? How is empty space between cities innovation? How is removal of terraforming innovation? How is making a traffic system that makes no sense innovation. Change does not mean innovation. Innovation is to make something better. The reason I am willing to pay is this. $20 dollars is a very low sum to get a proper sim city game. It might fail, but I am willing to take that risk for $20 dollars. In fact I will pay $500 if I can get a proper sim city game. Hence, I don't see the reason to not back them.