It’s definitely a hard concept to get right. Perhaps even for the actual developers, given how they’re not really developing a Sims 5 and how we see people sticking faithfully (and with well-articulated reasons beyond mere nostalgia) to older games in the series.

Paradox already cancelled Life By You. I’m not sure how close Paralives is to release. So it’s at least impressive that InZOI managed to release something. The only other one I can think of that managed to release is Tiny Life, but that one’s way less ambitious.

I think people are really clamoring for some competition to The Sims. I feel that way myself.

But a lot of what I’ve seen of the game so far indeed feels so uncanny and off-putting. The generative AI feature I saw demonstrated in a video I watched, the texture generator, also seems like a huge step down from the Create A Style feature from The Sims 3, which I sorely miss.