Electronic Arts has explained that it is leaving toddlers and swimming pools out of The Sims 4 because the studio wanted to concentrate on “revolutionising the Sims themselves”.

The company sparked controversy in late June when it revealed that players would not be able to build swimming pools and toddlers would not be in the series’ latest entry.

“The vision for The Sims 4 is a new experience that brings your Sims to life in deeper and uniquely personal ways: through emotions, personality traits, behaviours and interactions,” EA’s Rachel Franklin said in a post on The Sims 4 website, in part. “So the bottom line is that when we sat down and looked at everything we wanted to do for this game, all the new tech we wanted to build into it, the fact was that there would be trade-offs, and these would disappoint some of our fans.”

“So, rather than include toddlers, we chose to go deeper on the features that make Sims come alive: meaningful and often amusing emotions, more believable motion and interactions, more tools in Create A Sim, and more realistic (and sometimes weird) Sim behaviour,” Franklin explained. “Instead of pools, we chose to develop key new features in Build Mode: direct manipulation, building a house room-by-room and being able to exchange your custom rooms easily, to make the immediate environment even more relatable and interactive for your Sim.”

EA suggested that pools and toddlers may be added to the game at a later date when it said: “While we recognize that some of you will be disappointed that pools and toddlers won’t be available when The Sims 4 Base Game launches in September, you should know that we’re building an incredibly strong foundation that is capable of fulfilling every one of your desires in the years to come.”

(via CVG)