EA, the company which Maxis (the creators of The Sims) is a division of, has done some very good business. Their profit over the third quarter of 2002 had increased with 89% to $453 million compared to the same quarter last year ($250 million then). The main money-making games were Madden NFL 2003, NCAA Football 2003, Medal of Honor Frontline and - of course - The Sims. EA also expects to release 35 new titles for the holidays - the most ever. Those games will be released over 75 countries and in 20 different languages. One of them being The Sims Online. Some nice facts to know are that EA had five op the top selling games in the US charts of PC games, including The Sims and the expansion packs Livin' Large and Vacation. Note that Unleashed wasn't released in that time period yet, as the third quarter ended 30 September. The total of The Sims 'units' sold so far are 18 million. Some more financial (and other) figures can be found in the full press release (a MS-Word document). Now why coiuld Europeans never get a rebate for The Sims Deluxe..?