Fourjays

The whole "custom content isn't profitable" argument doesn't work, as proven by EA themselves with the Sims franchise. There is a huge amount of custom content. One of the things EA did with the Sims 3 was to get all the content creators involved to see what they could do with it. I think that any future Sim City should take the Sims approach and release expansions, and not to add stuff that should be there in the first place either. The Sims 2 was great with all the expansions, but was still good without them. It was only after an expansion pack came out that people would be like "it's so dull without the expansion". I played SC4 without RH for years and thoroughly enjoyed it. It is only now that I have played RH that I realise it is better with it. But with CXL people are saying it is dull and add-ons will make it better... this is not a good start. Unfortunately for MC, even if they changed to an expansion pack model I wouldn't bother - the game mechanics are fundamentally flawed, and even an expansion pack can't fix that.

I wouldn't mind in-game advertising, and in this context it is great. However, I will never to subscribe to anything with adverts. Choose one or the other because having both is just greedy.

Only now am I starting to use custom content for SC4 as I've always enjoyed it just as a game... starting from a few houses and a factory, and working up to a massive city with skyscrapers and airports, rich areas and poor areas, etc. CXL does lack that element and feels like it is aimed at those who simply want to create a city as a piece of art. Just feels so "static" to me, whereas SC4 "lives". MC should take a look at Tropico 3... the demo of that kept me happy all weekend. The CXL demo was boring after an hour. I don't even remember City Life being as dull as CXL, so something is really not right with it as a game.

Let's put it this way... I last played a city builder about 2 years ago. Last week a friend told me that the demo of CitiesXL had come out. I'd previously watched videos of it so keenly downloaded the demo. After a day and a half of CitiesXL, I installed SC4 + RH and I haven't touched CitiesXL since. CitiesXL just didn't feel "right" to me. The interface is horrible for a start, but the whole gameplay felt rather stiff to me. It feels more like I am designing a static city, rather than being the mayor of a living city. SC2000 had more life in it! There is no humor in it (SC4 still makes me laugh regularly) and the MMO aspect seems pretty dull too. A chatbox and some trade.... yay? Plus a limit of 5 cities, which I thought was just in the demo but have since learnt is part of the game. I wouldn't pay a one-off price for it as a whole game at the moment, let alone a subscription too. SC4 will do just fine.