First Sims 3 expansion announced

Electronic Arts has announced the first expansion for The Sims 3, entitled World Adventures, which will be released globally in the week beginning November 16.

The expansion will bring international travel into the game and include locations inspired by famous landmarks.

"We're thrilled with the global success of The Sims 3 over these last few months and are looking forward to expanding on the gameplay experience with one of the most robust expansion packs to The Sims yet," said Scott Evans, GM of The Sims at EA. "Players will be able to take their Sims on the adventure of a lifetime and explore lands outside of Sunset Valley and Riverview, pursue thrilling new life destinies in locations around the world inspired by famous destinations, and immerse themselves in the open-ended gameplay where they'll discover new cities in China, France, and Egypt, and share new stories."

The Sims 3, released in June this year, stormed to the top of the PC charts around the world, and the franchise has often been credited with turning game expansions into such a lucrative business model.

"To me, I like it, and I think that for a lot of our core players they'd say they love it," Rod Humble, head of the EA Play label, told GamesIndustry.biz in June. "I just think that for the players that don't have it, they feel like they're falling behind if they don't have all the expansion packs, and to help serve them is over time we put out a value price compilation - say the first two expansions bundled for a lower price.

"There's a significant proportion of players who wait for that, they know it's coming and they can afford to wait a year or two, get the whole lot in one go."