The Sims Studio

The Sims Studio is a division of Maxis, a subsidiary label of Electronic Arts. Its primary location is situated at the Electronic Arts' Redwood City campus, where other EA studios, such as Visceral Games, are located. In addition to the Redwood City site, the team has consisted of people from EA Black Box in EA Canada. A secondary studio is located at Salt Lake City. Upon inception, The Sims Studio took over production and expansion of the game franchise The Sims from Maxis; before eventually being reintegrated with the Maxis label in time for production of The Sims 3: University Life, and later The Sims 4.

History
After several years of successful titles in The Sims franchise, in 2006 Electronic Arts transferred development responsibilities from the original developer, Maxis, to their newly created division initially named The Sims Division, later changed to the current name. Rod Humble was selected to lead this new team as the studio head. Maxis refocused their attention on Spore, their next project. Scott Evans is the l General Manager of the studio. Lucy Bradshaw was the General Manager, then Senior Vice President of EA Maxis until 2015.

Will Wright and Maxis were not involved in the development of The Sims 3, although many developers of former Maxis products remained involved in its production. This third generation of the main series was developed by The Sims Studio. In 2012, EA announced an organizational restructuring that features Maxis as one of their four primary labels, effectively replacing the former EA Play label. As part of this initiative, The Sims Studio became a part of the EA Maxis label (Redwood Shores studios). Thus, the Maxis branding is now once again present on releases starting with The Sims 3: University Life, developed by the Salt Lake City studios, and SimCity, developed by the Emeryville studios.

The Sims Studio has been integrated back into the Maxis subsidiary of EA, and released The Sims 4 in September 2014.