A 2013 EA-Maxis reboot was subject to what has been described as "one of the most disastrous launches in history", which may have triggered the 2015 shutdown of Maxis Emeryville and the end of the franchise.

Founder Jeff Braun of then-tiny Maxis agreed to publish SimCity as one of two initial games for the company.

Broderbund executives Gary Carlston and Don Daglow saw that the title was infectious and fun, and signed Maxis to a distribution deal for both of its initial games.

With that, four years after initial development, SimCity was released for the Amiga and Macintosh platforms, followed by the IBM PC and Commodore 64 later in 1989.

The SNES port was very similar to the original edition but had some unique features, including Reward buildings, a Mario statue and possible attacks by a giant Bowser.

Underground layers were introduced for water pipes and subways, along with many new buildings, more elaborate financial controls and many other improvements.

It introduced many features, including waste management, agriculture, business deals and expanded inter-city relations.

[19] After the release of SimCity 4, EA had Tilted Mill Entertainment develop the next major title in the franchise, rather than Maxis.

The group developed SimCity Societies (2007), which was significantly different from prior games, owing to a small-scale social engineering focus and less detailed simulation.

Rather than placing zones, buildings were constructed individually for example, similar to Monte Cristo's game City Life.

System specific features were prominent, such as the microphone, which was used to blow out fires, and the touch screen, which was used to control the interface.

[29] The title featured the ability to directly draw roads and train tracks on the ground using the pointer function of the Wii Remote, as well as several customizable themes for the city's buildings.

[citation needed] SimCity's sixth major release was announced on March 5, 2012, for Windows and Mac OS X by Maxis at the "game changers" event.

Director Ocean Quigley discussed issues that occurred during the development of the title, which stemmed from two conflicting visions coming from EA and Maxis.

EA wanted to emphasize multiplayer, collaborative gameplay, with some of the simulation work conducted on remote servers, in part to combat piracy.

[2] EA announced that they would offer a free game from their library to all those who bought SimCity as compensation for the problems, and they concurred that the way the launch had been set up was "dumb".

[40] An offline mode was subsequently made available by EA in March 2014, and a mobile port entitled SimCity: BuildIt was released later that year.

[41][42][43] It has been suggested that the poor performance of SimCity was responsible for the 2015 closure of Maxis' Emeryville studios, and the end of the franchise.

[49] SimTown allows the player to construct a town consisting of streets, houses, businesses and parks and control the people in it.

One of the game's main attractions was the ability to explore any cities created in SimCity 2000 by car in a cinematic style.

The 2013 reboot was very poorly received, with Green Man Gaming comparing its effect on the franchise to the destruction of the city of Pompeii.

SimCity games are also built on the premise that simply adding police stations reduces crime nearby, which may not be the case.

[62] The franchise has been credited with inspiring a generation of urban planners, transport officials, and local government figures, who experienced the games at a younger age and took on those careers in later life.

[65] While there were a handful of city-building games before 1989, SimCity popularized the genre and laid the groundwork for many titles inspired by it, including Cities: Skylines (2015), which was greenlit after the poor reception of the reboot.

[66] More broadly, the lack of a win condition in favor of open-ended play was a novelty at the time that gave rise to Maxis' "software toys" design concept, which influenced many other titles from the company.