User:Monthstay~enwiki/TS 3

thumb|right|The Sims 3 teaser

The Sims 3 was announced in an interview by EA in November 2006, where it was also mentioned that the release date of the game would likely be in the "fiscal 2009" year.

A teaser site currently exists for The Sims 3, although it only states that more information is forthcoming on March 19 2008.

In the 7th expansion pack for The Sims 2, The Sims 2: Free Time, a secret unlockable event may occur in which a sim-version of Rod Humble, The Sims 3 ' s executive producer, gives the player's sim family an unopened gift box. When opened, the sim who opened the box gets a special computer which is not available in the buy mode catalog of the game as well as a copy of The Sims 3, which the sims may play on their computers or console systems. It should be stressed that this is simply, like all the other games sims can play in The Sims 2, a looping gameplay video shown on your sim's television or computer screens when played by a sim, not a playable demo game that the user can control. A video of the gameplay (recorded during one of The Sims 2: FreeTime preview sessions for fansites of The Sims franchise) was taken by the German The Sims fansite 'SimTimes'. The video is effectively the same as that in The Sims 2: FreeTime, except that the music has changed.

In the April/May Edition of the Games for Windows: The Official Magazine, there is a 12-page preview of the game. This preview explains that, in The Sims 3, your sims' houses and the neighbourhood will be entirely in one seamless, continuous map, and states that "what you do outside your home now matters as much as what you do within". It also states that the typical bladder and energy motives will be overhauled, and replaced with "discrete moods".