The Sims Studio News

Holiday weekends usually mean long car rides and time with your family. Distract the kids in the backseat and make music when you're hanging out and do both on the cheap with this week's holiday batch of deals.

EA Salt Lake, the local video game developer mostly known for creating "The Sims" titles for the PC and family-oriented games for consoles such as the Nintendo Wii and the PlayStation 3, is releasing its first title for mobile phones on Thursday.

EA CFO Blake Jorgenson recently said at the Stifel 2013 Technology Conference that the game publisher will continue to support the Xbox 360 and PS3 with game releases until 2017.

The Sims is one of the gaming sensations of the 21st century. Since the series was launched in 2000, it has spawned a host of successful sequels, and The Sims 3 is the latest and greatest of them all.

EA recently provided us with a producer walkthrough video for The Sims 3 Island Paradise DLC, an upcoming expansion pack for the game.

From owning and managing a resort, to living a life on a houseboat and even deep sea diving, The Sims 3 Island Paradise opens up a world of possibilities never seen in the franchise.

The new video game releases for June 2013 are shaping up quite nicely. Not only are we getting the Legendary Edition of Skyrim, but we're also seeing the release of two insanely anticipated games.

Players found that male characters could marry one another and raise children in Nintendo's 3DS game Tomodachi Collection: New Life.

The GfK Chart-Track Chart of the top 20 bestselling, full-priced PC games in the U.K. is now updated for the week ending May 11th.

EA recently announced a May 30 release date for The Sims 3: Dragon Valley , the newest digital world to join The Sims 3 franchise.

The game deals from retailers this spring have been extremely sparse and the offers for the week of Sunday, May 12 are no different as there is only a smattering of deals for the PS3, Xbox 360 , Wii U and PC.

It is known that The Sims 3 Dragon Valley will hatch on May 30. The digitally distributed expansion will add a new location, architecture and dragons to the franchise.

The SIms 4 was announced this week for early 2014. With The Sims 3 such a robust experience and still going full steam ahead , what type of original expansions can the next installment in mega franchise come up with? The Sims 4: Arctic Surviva l? Lunar Expedition ? Noir Detective ? What's everyone playing this weekend?

The next anticipated add-on pack for The Sims 3 now has a release date of May 30th and will be available on The Sims Store, introducing mythical new adventures and cute baby dragons! All pictures and logos are copyright to their respective owners.

Between the resignation of its CEO following substantial financial shortfalls, the company's repeated capture of the Worst Company in America award and a bevy of layoffs and closures impacting several studios under its banner, 2013 has kind of sucked for Electronic Arts.

From the always-on debacle that followed SimCity to the closure of two studios and hundreds of layoffs, EA is slowly losing its position as a game publishing stalwart.

SimCity will receive the 3.0 update this week, which will hopefully go down smoother than 2.0 released in late April .

Rockstar has released a new trailer showcasing the three protagonists you'll be able to play through Grand Theft Auto V with, and each looks to have a different story to tell.

Earlier today we reported that The Sims 4 announcement was imminent , a domain registration strongly suggested it.

Quibian Salazar-Moreno is a freelance entertainment journalist based in Los Angeles who covers music, sports, television, movies and technology.