Today I buy TS3 for Xbox360.

I play TS2 on slow PC but I had left off paying anything from EA for a long time. I was offended by some of their treatment of customers. Mostly because I felt they were pushing me to leave Sims 2 for their Sims 3. And that stupid broken launcher made me so mad. But I see they have fixed the ts2 launcher so I will forgive EA if they do no more stupid stuff.

I do not want more games for my computer. It is old windows vista with very old GeForce 8400 GS card outdated. I do not have $360 dollars for fancy new graphic card to install !!! What madness to think I might have much money for computer parts? So I will use my Xbox 360 that I bought for it reasonable priced $20 usb memory card. That I can afford. Why does everyone think you are made of money? I do not understand where people get rich to give so much money?

But I really wanted to play with horses and I find the xbox version pets will have only dogs and cats. Oh well. A Game Station is suppose to be for games after all, not stupid expensive computers.

That is the graphics card I have and it runs modern games and The Sims 3 just fine. Also if you look on sites like Tigerdirect you can get a new Graphics card for under $50 that will do the job. You only really need it to support the drives and have around a gig of ram on it and you should be fine, you don't have to give up.

Oh and I say this as someone who love my 360 but I had one red ring of death on me, and another that's disc lazer died and the machine is put together in such a way that you can't replace parts that break down so your only solution is to buy a new one and that has started costing an arm and a leg now that you have to look places like Ebay to find them, so the 360 can run into money in the long run too.

Honestly by building my own PCs I have never had to spend more then $500 and that includes my 24 inch monitor and a bluray burner drive with a TV tuner card. If anyone where to ask me and again I say this as someone who loves the Fable series, Halo Wars, and the Xbox 360 controller, i would have to say that saving your money and building a new PC is better value for the money since if something goes wrong you can fix it and you can do more with a PC.

Plus I don't think you can run mods on the 360 version and some of the mods make the game much better if you ask me.

Still to each their own I am just saying that I have ended up losing lot of money on the 360 as well.

Oh I forgot about all the $40 controllers I have owned that just decided to stop working for no reason, that is another thing that ended up costing me some cash.

That is a bit of an exaggeration. You can purchase a decent GPU for 60 USD these days.


Capitalism. That's why.


This "Game Station" you speak of is just a computer. That's all video game consoles are.

Yeah these days with all of their features and operating systems a console is just an old PC. It used to be they worked better when all they did was play games but now I find I get just as many glitches and crashes as with a PC and when the hardware goes bad I can't fix it myself. I used to be a console guy but I stopped being one after I figured out that my PC that I built in late 2011 is just as powerful as the newest consoles and I can do a lot more with it.

Also I can't imagine trying to control The Sims 3 without a mouse.

All the latest drivers needed to run modern games work just fine with my 8400 GS, in fact last year I got a new video card and it didn't work as well and the newer games kept crashing but when I swapped the old one back in all of those problems went away.

With the NRAAs mods like overwatch The Sims 3 runs like a dream on my system.

Any one of the cards in this link will do the job for you while not breaking the bank or costing as much as even a used console. I have used some of them and they have all worked fine for me and they run modern games including the Sims 3 without a problem.

Click here for good video cards.

Screw consoles. I support game modding so I only buy PC games.

Computer stuff isn't that expensive any more. $360 for a video card is overboard. That's what you spend if you want to play games in 4K resolution on a huge monitor. A normal person could get by with a really good card that can do all settings maxed for $100. If you don't mind compromising on graphics settings, a budget card would even work. I bought an HD 6450 card for $10 (after rebate) and it's 8-tiers higher than your 8400GS on the hierarchy chart so I think it should handle all Sims games.

I have TS3 on both PC and PS3. While I prefer the PC version, I do like the ability to play the PS3 version when Big Silver (my computer) is busy doing other things. I can't speak for the Xbox version, nor can I speak for Pets on either console (as I only have the base game on PS3), but I have a good time with the PS3 version, even doing challenges on it!

Oh yeah mods make PC gaming worth it. For instance if I had gotten Mass Effect 3 on the 360 instead of the PC I would be stuck with Bioware's ending for the series. As it is I am not.

No, it depends on your other computer specs as well. I spent over 100 USD on my graphics card and it runs without lag on the lowest settings..

I think that was because of your Windows Vista slowing your PC down, the 8400GS is still good enough for TS3,

I just helped upgraded my 6 yrs old niece's PC recently, by replacing her single core Pentium 4 @ 3.06Ghz with an old C2D 6400 @.2.13Ghz compatible with her motherboard, and by adding an old ATi Radeon X1600, with her 2Gb of rams and running on Windows XP, it still can runs TS3 without a problem. And it's only cost me $10 for the C2D and the old ATi X1600 at the pawn shop.

Now I'm still working for her mods that she likes to use for her game, she got TS3 BG, AMB and GEN, with the right mods it even runs almost no lag at all

Oh, okay. So Sims 3 doesn't need an advanced graphic's card. I'm running a Dell. When people are trying to upgrade it for me the new parts don't fit. Not much luck with it. Trying to save enough money to buy a gaming computer from a city far away from where I live where they advertise they build them just for that. But to add TS3 I would still have to spend so much time to get rid of all the movies I've made on my PC from animations. My animations. My Guild Wars 2. My Sims 2. No memory left for anything. Don't want that project now. Thanks for the confidence in my computer's ability to run TS3, tho. Good know.

First I will see if I like Sims 3 for xbox. Xbox is in the living room for family games. We need less dark games and more light happy games. Real games. Not that junk they sell you like Princess Dora The Explora takes Shriek the Donkey on a picnic type games. 3d fancy real games not marketing schemes to small children and naive parents with money.

The PC is in my room. No one is allowed in there. Game stations are for living rooms. Need game for living room. See?

yeah I had vista and on two of my computers and one of them crashed running space invaders. That has nothing to do with the hardware or software. Both of them started working perfectly once I installed XP on the one and 7 on the other. Vista sucks and I would never buy a dell, they are no end of trouble and they use no standard sized parts when so it is hard to fix something when it breaks. I owned a dell once, never again. For what they charge you can get a better PC that you can replace and upgrade hardware on.

If you want to upgrade and keep your animated files either move them to a USB drive and then put them on your new computer or burn them to a disc.

Sounds like you got screw by Microsoft and Dell, sorry to hear that.

Why don't you post your DeviceConfig from your TS3 folder in MyDocuments folder here, and/or maybe you can download CPUID-CPU-Z and post its screen shot, so I can give you recommendation for your motherboard if you want to have light upgrade to it, it doesn't have to be expensive, you already have the 8400GS, there's a lot of cheap processor on ebay, but you definitely have to get rid of your Windows Vista, Vista is the main cause for your computer not performing well as is should, either get XP or Windows 7 would help a lot in increasing your PC's performance.

Also 7 seems to run games made for Windows 95 and 98 better then XP or Vista. At least in my case I had not been able to play games like command and conquer or Wing Commander Prophecy on my XP or Vista machines but once I installed seven they and a lot of my other older windows games started running like a dream again. I don't know the reason for this all I know is that it seems to hold true on every seven machine I have used. Now not every game works but enough of them work that I would say going with seven is well worth it just for that reason.

When I first got into upgrading and building PCs it was message boards like this that helped guide me through it and showed me that I could do it without breaking the bank. I know what it is like to be without cash. I have to buy my PC games used and I have not been to the movies in almost two years, that is how tight money is for me right now. That is why I am grateful for the help of fellow gamers because building and repairing PC myself really is the best value for what little money I have.

Post your specs and let us see if we can help. I had a couple of motherboards get fried a few years ago by a power surge but most of the parts on them still work, if you are interested and any of them would help I would be happy to send them to you free of charge since they are just collecting dust in my room and I have zero use for them right now since I don't have room for another PC in my house and I have moved on to more advanced parts but it sounds like they would upgrade your system if they will fit your board. Upgrading may seem hard at first but but believe me when I say that once you start doing it things are a lot easier then you would think they would be.

Post your specs and let us see if we can help.

Hope this helps you out.

Oh and if it is the amount of memory on your video card that is giving you trouble I just remembered that I have an old GeForce 9500 GT with a gig of memory sitting around here that I am not using.

Sadly I can't help you with the windows problem, Vista just sucks and it came preinstalled on so many machines. I would say your best option is to save up your money and switch to Seven and after Microsoft stops supporting it use free third party software like AVG and Malwarebytes to protect your system. I wouldn't go with Windows 8 since from what I have see at a friend's house it can have trouble with games some times. Seven seems like the better OS if you are into making your own animation and playing games.

Hope this helps.

EA doesn't make games, they publish games made by poorly paid often abused developers who are often times contractually bound to them almost like indentured servants.

Yeah, I don't blame the people who program the games. That is why my boycott that has been in effect since 2012 is against EA and not the programers. If they leave and try something new I am more then happy to support them.

Origin, Westwood, and Maxis are just a small sample of the companies that I love that have been killed by EA and their lack of respect for both programers and gamers alike. I will never buy a game new from them for as long as I live.

I got banned from their tech support forum for reporting a game crashing bug in Mass Effect 3 and I had just built my new PC around the specs for that game and I paid $90 to get it on release day and they banned me for trying to hurt sale just because I reported a bug and asked if there was a patch.

I have not bought a new EA game since, i buy them all used now so they don't get my money. What is more I talked six people out of buying Mass Effect 3 at full price in it's first month of release and I will not be buying Mass Effect 4, so I think I had the last laugh.

Treating gamers like dirt is bad business for a gaming company in the long run.