First released over eight years ago, The Sims 4 recently went free-to-play across the board, bringing brand new players and returning vets back to the series on their favorite platforms. If you’re looking to start a virtual family for fun, love the idea of playing god over a whole town of Sims, or are just burnt out on your other favorite cozy village games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Stardew Valley, now is the perfect time to jump into The Sims 4.
But if you were looking to pick up the game on your Nintendo Switch, we’ve got some bad news. Here’s everything we know about The Sims 4 coming to Nintendo’s favorite handheld console.
Unfortunately, The Sims 4 is not available on Nintendo Switch, and it doesn’t look like it’s coming anytime soon. Despite the title’s immense popularity on other consoles, The Sims 4 just never made its way over to the platform (even though there have always been rumors that a port was right around the corner).
With developer EA’s recent announcement that it has started working on the next Sims game, we don’t expect there to suddenly be interest in bringing The Sims 4 to a new platform. If EA was planning on doing so, it likely would’ve come along with the title going free-to-play.
EA is still supporting The Sims 4, though — new, paid DLC content is coming to the game in the future.
This free-to-play version of The Sims 4 will come to most platforms, including PC (via the EA app, Origin, and Steam), PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
EA and Maxis just announced that the developers have started working on the next Sims title — code-named Project Rene right now — but the project is still in early development.
“This is the future of The Sims, built on a foundation of charming Sims, powerful tools, and meaningful stories,” said Lyndsay Pearson, VP of Franchise Creative for The Sims, on the game’s development. “This future requires us to stay true to what The Sims has always been while pushing to evolve how those Sims think and behave, to push tools even further when creating and customizing, and to explore innovative ways to not only tell stories but to collaborate on those stories or creations with your closest friends across your favorite devices.”
EA did not detail all of the specific platforms Project Rene will come to but has shared footage of the game running on PC and mobile during a showcase. The game is “years away,” so a specific release date or window was not shared, but we’ll learn it in due course as EA continues the open development process with this game. Of course, we could have a completely new Nintendo console by then!
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.