Why would anyone buy a Sims clone? I wouldn't buy it if it wasn't at least as good as the original. That's more than five years of catching up to do against a company with nearly infinite assets.
After Doom came out, many companies jumped on the bandwagon and a huge number of FPS were released. Some succesful, many not. Same with Everquest. Now WoW dominates the MMORPG market and new unknown companies don't stand a chance making any good money. Sims2 dominates the life-sim market, so the market share that is still available for those markets is awfully small.
SH4 is already heading for mainstream. Ask yourself what got the biggest overhaul in this version and it is definitely the graphics engine. AI was hardly touched. Crew management got changed because the SH3 version was unworkable. The career got very little attention.. Look at an average (hardcore) sim and the screenshots that get released before the game goes gold. It's always action shots, never a campaign map or administrative screen.. Yup, SH is way more mainstream than you may think.
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