EA's The Sims Social Debuts With 4M+ MAUs

Electronic Arts' Facebook iteration of its popular Sims franchise, The Sims Social, has ceased its public beta and is now live, the company revealed Thursday. The game is a collaboration between EA's The Sims Studio, based in Northern California, and Playfish's London studio. It also marks a substantial "collaboration and partnership with Facebook," EA Play's John Buchanan said recently. "When we created The Sims Social, it was important for us to incorporate the deep gameplay nuances The Sims Studio has perfected and leverage what Playfish does best – develop compelling, cutting-edge social-gaming experiences," said Playfish's London Studio's GM John Earner in a statement today. The launch is a major move in EA's "offensive" strategy to transform its games into services. Development on the title was rather substantial for a Facebook game, dating back to October of last year -- that's about double the 4-6 months EA Facebook games took in the past. The Sims has sold over 125 million games to date. The Sims Social claims 4,859,046 MAUs at press time.