• Create and customize your town by building homes, businesses, roads and civic structures; add details like tress, lampposts and benches.
• Satisfy your Sims’ interests by purchasing a variety of objects for them from the stores in your town.
• Observe your Sims as they go about their day and react to their individual needs and requests.
• Throw town events like block parties and concerts.
• See both the “good” and “bad” sides of your town in illustrative 3-D graphics.
• Import your families from The Sims.

Well, the whole reason we came up with the idea for SimsVille was the feedback from The Sims players, who were asking to see the lives of their Sims outside the house. They were sick of being stuck indoors, and while that aspect of The Sims is still fun, players wanted to know what goes on in their Sims’ lives outside the house. The Sims: Hot Date lets players do everything they’ve been asking for, like hang out at the bar, have a picnic downtown, go shopping, and so on. After a while, we found that it was simply more fun than what we had in SimsVille.

Maxis announced today that Simsville has been canceled. The latest in their popular Sim line of games, it was scheduled for release in 2002. It wasn’t up to the standards of Maxis, according to a spokesperson for Maxis, who also stated that despite this, the team did a great job and is being reassigned to other products like The Sims Online and other future projects.

Simsville was to be a game somewhere between The Sims and SimCity, where you place individual homes, businesses, roads and city structures. Simsville was to retain some of the voyeurism of the Sims with more of the planning of SimCity. It was designed to explore outside of the Sims’ houses, but with a product like the upcoming expansion The Sims Hot Date, they’re already offering some of that functionality. Simsville also was to have some more “adult” content in the form of crime, liquor stores, and general seediness.

Thank you for your interest in SimsVille.

Maxis and the SimsVille team have decided to suspend development of SimsVille. Everyone working on the project will be moving to other projects at Maxis. This includes The Sims Online and some other games in development that have yet to be announced. We’re excited to take what we’ve learned from SimsVille and put it towards the making of great new games for you.

Once again, thanks for your support.

Of course, in the Maxis tradition, we will continue with the level of comedy and surprise that is characteristic of our products. Don’t be too alarmed if your Sims start talking about little green men in SimsVille.