EA Poised To Announce ‘The Sims 4’ Pets Expansion Pack At GamesCon?

EA Games is on the verge of turning The Sims 4 into the comeback story of the gaming year. Through numerous discount promotions, monthly content patches, and frequent low-cost content packs, The Sims 4 has gone from an game frequently called sparse on content to a robust and customizable experience more worthy of carrying the premiere life simulation game into the next era of gaming.

Yet, for as much free and low-cost content as EA has thrown at longtime fans of the series in recent months, the company has been incredibly tight lipped about future plans for The Sims 4. Game packs and stuff packs are routinely announced with as little as two weeks notice. EA’s announcement of the release of the first expansion pack, The Sims 4: Get To Work, was a little less than one month before its release.

With so little notice between the announcement of new content for The Sims 4 and its release, it’s become difficult for longtime to predict exactly when a new release is on the horizon, but there is a definite pattern. At least one stuff pack and game play pack has separated each major The Sims 4-era release. Six months passed between the release of The Sims 4 base game and The Sims 4: Get to Work. With the releases of The Sims 4 Perfect Patio Stuff, The Sims 4 Luxury Party Stuff, and The Sims 4 Spa Day, it seems that EA is poised to announce the second Sims 4-era expansion pack. Fans of The Sims franchise may not have to wait too long for another announcement. In fact, it may only be a week and a half away.

SimsVIP reports that EA Games will hold a press conference on Wednesday, August 5, during Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. EA did not include The Sims 4 in its E3 press conference, and there may be one simple reason. Since E3, The Sims 4 development team has only released The Sims 4 Spa Day. If the current pattern holds, the next Sims 4 era expansion pack will be released sometime in September or early October, six months after the release of The Sims 4: Get to Work. E3’s mid-June date didn’t mesh with EA’s pattern of announcing expansion packs two months prior to release. The early August date of Gamecom fits better with EA’s announcement timetable.

So the question is, what will the next expansion pack be? As previously reported by the Inqusitir, the frontrunner, as far as fans are concerned, is still The Sims 4: Pets. However, there is a chance that EA won’t announce a new expansion pack at all.

Tech Times reports that Amazon Canada posted a bundle last week for The Sims 4 Outdoor Retreat and The Sims 4 Cool Kitchen Stuff, an apparently unreleased stuff pack. The bundle is listed as available on October 20, 2015, so it’s also possible that EA will announce both the next expansion pack and The Sim 4 Cool Kitchen Stuff.

Fans of The Sims 4 can expect some of their questions to be answered when EA holds its press conference on August 5 at 12 am PDT.

[Image by The Sims]