Interesting thread. I've been a member of this site for only a couple of years, but the amount of help and information here is outstanding. I purchased The Sims at it's inception and have ran the versions ever since. Overall, it's a phenomenal achievement IMO.

Aspects of corporate profiteering aside, I would guess the development team had a lot to consider when looking at moving forward in The Sims 4. I don't imagine the decisions that have to be made are easy for a number of reasons. While I might be a hardware geek that's quick to move into newer developments in that area, the amounts of legacy hardware still in use on a global scale would need to be considered. Even if CPU cores had moved into 64 bit architecture quite some time ago, Microsoft has only recently made it's Windows product exclusively 64 bit. I think Vista and Windows 7 being released in both 32 and 64 bit versions has left some very tough decisions for software developers, especially something like we're dealing with here. This game is screaming to throw off the ball and chain of 32 bit code, and I would be the first to say it should move out of that realm, but I would think that such a move has the potential to alienate a huge amount of potential customers given the existence of so much legacy 32 bit OS machines in current use. Even on machines that could easily step into a 64 bit conversion, I just don't see that average PC user being willing to address that issue. I feel it's a real tough time for a lot of game developers and they're stuck with a legacy monkey on their backs.

If the question is whether EA will sacrifice advancing graphics to reduce hardware overhead, I don't think they have much choice at this point. We know this coding transition is only temporary, but much of the 32 bit OS machines dispensed will be in use for a while. I have every confidence the potential to alienate a segment of their customer base was studied carefully, and the decision to retain the limitations of a 32 bit OS environment was done reluctantly. LIke many here, I have moved into newer hardware, more RAM, and 64 bit OS installations and would be screaming for this game to throw off the legacy technology it's constructed with, but I'm just not going to get that right now.

Overall, I've been tuning and tweaking and having PC games blow up in my face for around 20 years. They push the limits. I've always bought new hardware when it's needed but not everyone can or are willing to. Sometimes it was hard to afford, but I'm a geek and love the stuff. I don't see the average PC user having that attitude. Couple that with the current market trends away from a standard PC and Windows platform, and it makes for some tough decisions effecting the development of The Sims 4. So yes, some sacrifices will be made that I won't like seeing. It will be interesting to see if EA can polish The Sims 4 enough to pull users away from The Sims 3.

Some of that RAM have to run the computer and if you have a 32 bit OS then 4GB RAM is not enough to play the whole series with all the add-ons, DLC, and CC. What I have seen is the 64bit OS player may be able to play longer but still if you play too long the game crashes or gets wonky. I have to watch how long I play or I will end up with an error 12.

I see you jumping in to help lots of people on this forum, good for you! That's very nice if you.

(Sorry if this is OT for this thread.) I had dealt with similar issues a couple years back. (Running Win7 64) While many things can have an effect, I was able to resolve some things by adjusting my Windows using the information at the link below, and also always doing a "save as" and numbering my saves in sequence. These things had a huge impact for me and totally eliminated my problems in that area. This also results in a huge mount of data in the saves directory so I go in there and delete all but the most recent 6 saves or so. I hope this can help some people.

Insufficient Memory Crashes
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title..._Memory_Crashes
(Also found on this site somewhere too.)

I also wonder; My saves can get near 1GB of data or more, currently 1.29GB. Is that considered huge as compared to the average user?

Merry Christmas and happy holidays and all that good stuff to everyone!