When it was revealed back in February that The Sims 3 would be delayed, many fans who had rightly been anxiously waiting the arrival of the game felt let down and a little bemused by the reasoning given for the delay at the time – the game needed to be marketed further.

I am sure you would agree that it was vague to say the least, and many took it upon themselves to think past the public reasons to draw their own conclusions. Perhaps the most common conclusion reached was that EA/Maxis had simply not had as many pre-orders of The Sims 3 as they were anticipating, and they wanted to re-claim more of their expenses prior to unleashing the game on the very loyal public.

This in turn made sims fans, especially those who had already pre-ordered their copy of The Sims 3, want evidence that the game’s

 developers really do want to push the game further in terms of marketing – and that evidence came soon enough as a massive advert covering a 16,000 square foot face of a building at 6464 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California.

There has been further proof that EA are stepping up their efforts to promote The Sims 3 in the shape of a 5-billboard arrangement placed in Times Square, New York.

What does this mean for The Sims 3 fans? Basically it means the release date most certainly will not be delayed any further no matter how many pre-orders of the game are placed – they have blatantly laid out far

 too much cash on marketing now to go and change the date so many of the adverts have carried once again.

Whether the marketing of The Sims 3 will continue to be at such a large scale over the course of the next month and a half remain to be seen, but we would expect things to go a little quiet for a few weeks at least before The Sims 3 is forced back into the limelight once more in the week or two preceeding June 2nd when it finally hits shelves in the States! Remember, the UK release follows just three-days later on June 5th.