The Sims Brand Death Spiral
The Sims is a pretty amazing brand: it came from another, more hard core brand; it rocketed in popularity and became a brand unto itself; it maintained incredible strength in the face of countless product releases and endless milking. Part of that is the more casual audience, but part of it is the relative skill with which EA has handled it. In a company that notoriously tried to kill off its largest non-Madden cash cow before it was even released, The Sims has dodged the day-to-day perils of the “bright idea”. (Well, except the Sims Online.)
The latest “bright idea” to happen to The Sims is Sims-branded generic casual games. Have you ever wanted to know what happens when you combine pinball/Peggle/Tetris/Luxor/whatever with Sims-flavored graphics? No? Then don’t read this.