IGN preview of The Sims 3 Store & free downloadable town, Riverview

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The Sims 3: A Peek at The Store and Riverview

We check out the online store and the new town.

By Jason Ocampo

The Sims 3 may have leaked onto the Internet two weeks before its release, but there's more to the game than just that code. EA's big sequel ships with only one town, Sunset Valley, but a second town, Riverview, will be available for free download once you register the game. Beyond that, there's the online interaction through the game's Web site and online store. What the store looks like remains hidden to you until the game's official release on June 2, but we were recently granted access behind EA's firewall to check out the store, as well as Riverview.

When you get the game you can set up an account on The Sims 3 Web site. Now, this is important because the Web site is a portal to many different things. There's a section called My Page which has various subsections. My Page lets you set up a Facebook- or MySpace-style social networking page. My Blog lets you blog about your Sims 3 experience. There are also sections that let you manage your friends list, send and receive messages, and keep track of things that you've tagged in the game that you like.

See how lifetime wishes work. (HD available.)

Then there's The Exchange part of the site; it lets you share your creations with the rest of the world. This includes objects, sims, lots, households, clothing, hair color, accessories, and patterns. After that, there's Movies & More, which lets you create movies and stories. We covered this movie mash up tool set last month, but it basically gives you movie editing tools in the Web site. You can then share your movies with your friends or the community as a whole, or upload them to video sites such as YouTube.

A major component of The Sims 3 Web site is The Store. Now if you've been keeping up with gaming the past few years, then you know that one of the emerging trends are microtransactions. It's the idea that you can buy optional items for, say, an online role-playing game for a small fee. These usually include stuff like a cool costume or a unique item, so it seems like a natural for The Sims. The Sims 3 will introduce an online store and SimPoints, the currency that the store uses. To get you started, EA will give you 1,000 SimPoints in your account. You can purchase more SimPoints in 500-, 1,000-, and 2,000-point packages; 1,000 SimPoints costs $10, so basically think of it as 100 points as costing $1.

Are ready to shop?

The Store will feature exclusive items made by the development team that can be used to further customize your game. There are five sections currently, and we're told that you can shop in different ways. You can buy whole sets of furniture, or just room sets (say a bedroom set), or just individual items. The Sets section of the store groups all the various themed items together. Do you like Tiki furniture? Or maybe a Storybook set ("lovely items that look like they've been pulled directly from a storybook")? Or there's a Hewnsman set for those who like woodwork and detailing, and a Bayside set that looks like something out of an Ikea catalog; it mixes wood construction with modern appliances. If you don't want to buy whole sets, the Home Décor section of the store lets you shop for individual items. Maybe there's a nice vase you want, or a couch that caught your eye? The Home Improvement section of the store features items for use directly on your house; we're talking doors, windows, columns, fences, and the like. The Bob Vilas of the world will spend their time here.

Then there are two sections in The Store geared toward customizing your sims. The Clothing section breaks out the newest fashions, broken down by age group (child, teen, adult, etc.) and familiar categories (everyday, formal, sleepwear, and athletic). Finally, there's the Hair section that gives you access to new hairstyles as well as headwear, like cowboy hats and caps.

Now, you're probably wondering how much these items will cost. We were asked not to reveal specific prices, as the development team hasn't finalized all the prices yet and some may change before launch. We can say that we saw some things priced as low as 25 points and 75 points. We also saw many items at the 100-point level. We're told that the upper limit for stuff is around 2,000 points, which we imagine are probably for complete themed sets full of many individual items.

Keep in mind that The Store is completely optional; you won't need to use it to play the game. We've been playing with a review build and we can say that there's a wealth of content in there already, so it's not like EA is only giving us a handful of items and forcing us to purchase the rest. The amount of content in game seems comperable to The Sims 2 and its predecessor.

This sim goes fishing... in bed. (HD available.)

One thing that you won't need to spend money on is Riverview, the town that's only available once you register. After you've registered, you go to the Web site and download Riverview; that process launches The Sims 3 Game Launcher, the utility that lets you manage all of your downloaded content. Riverview will show up in the Downloads section. You then select it and click on install to have it installed into your game. Now you can play in Riverview. After that, Riverview shows up in your Installed Content section, where you can uninstall it and any other content that you've downloaded and installed from the Web site. So if you don't like a sim that you've downloaded from The Exchange, this is where you go to get rid of him or her.

Riverview offers up its own adventures to uncover. On our first runaround the town we discovered an abandoned and boarded up mine entrance on the outskirts as town, as well as a fish farm that's perfect if your sims like to go fishing. The miniature Stonehenge on a small island in the river is perfect to get away from everything, though we haven't figured out how to interact with it yet; is it a place for pagan rituals or just a nice spot for sims to make out?

Nice van.

With all this potential content online, it'll also be interesting to see how EA tackles expansion packs. After all, the first two games in the series each spawned more than half a dozen expansions that offered new gameplay features as well as new items, furnishings, clothing, and more. But if The Store allows you to buy lots of items independently of an expansion, does this mean that we'll see more of a focus on delivering different types of gameplay experiences with expansions? We'll have to wait and see.