"The Sims" is recognized as one of the most successful video game franchises in the world, and as stated in a report from Neurogadget, the past few games have seen a gap of five years between their releases. With "The Sims 4" coming in September 2014, this would mean "The Sims 5" could launch by 2019 at the earliest.
However, this would depend if EA and Maxis would even consider the series profitable. According to the report, Maxis had previously stated they would only work on "The Sims 5" and get it out quickly if "The Sims 4" was a success and unfortunately the game has not met those high standards.
It is pointed out in the report that "The Sims 4" currently has a 70 out of 100 score on Metacritic and did not achieve the same stellar sales as the previous installments. One of the biggest reasons for the failure of "The Sims 4" was the fact that it featured a unique DRM back when it launched.
When "The Sims 4" released back in 2014 it required players to be online just to play the game even if they intended to play without connecting to online multiplayer. Each time the game launched it would verify the game's license and even when a player could access the game it would often crash due to server issues.
These issues have since been fixed with later patches but the damage has already been done and the game has performed below the standards that the previous games have set.
Due to this, "The Sims 5" might not launch as early as 2019. With the previous entry not performing as well as intended it is possible that EA and Maxis would delay the game in order to prioritize on games that are more likely to succeed and earn a higher profit. This might push "The Sims 5" to 2020 or even beyond.
