Sorry Sims fans, but inZOI— poised to be The Sims 4‘s biggest competitor, will not be coming home this Christmas. Instead, the developers had to delay inZOI to March 28, 2025. Apparently, the game needed more time before its Early Access launch. This was despite the hopeful developer estimate that inZOI will be released sometime in 2024 a few months prior.
The statement came from inZOI director himself, Hyungjun Kim aka ‘Kjun’. Kjun recently announced the delay on inZOI‘s official Discord server. After much analysis, they’ve made a crucial decision to move inZOI‘s Early Access launch.
Of course, he also apologized. Kjun and his development team wanted to “bring you the game sooner.” Still, he was also adamant that the delay to 2025 would give inZOI the best possible start. After all, it will be competing against an industry giant that has gone unrivaled for decades.
“This message is about that realization. After reviewing your feedback from inZOI: Character Studio and analyzing a wealth of data from our various play tests, we have made our decision to release inZOI in Early Access on March 28, 2025. We apologize that we could not bring you the game sooner, but this decision reflects our commitment to giving inZOI the best possible start.”
Kjun is pleased, however, that their inZOI character creator trial test was a successful engagement. It has reportedly helped the development team polish the game further. They are now more committed than ever to bringing players the most complete experience possible.
Ever since its reveal back in the 2024 Gamescom in Germany, inZOI has gained much traction as quite possibly the most beautiful and most graphically advanced simulation game at the moment. It used Unreal Engine 5, whereas The Sims 4 kept to a more cartoonish look over the years.
inZOI‘s character creator notably gained a decent concurrent player count during its short, 5-day demo on Steam back in August 2024.
Meanwhile, another Sims competitor, Paralives, notably has a visual style closer to The Sims 4 than an adherence to realism, unlike inZOI. Paralives coincidentally will be released in 2025 as well and in Early Access.