Courtesy of simoperations.com:

EAUK's Community Representative Adroit, has published details on why pricing for the first The Sims 3 expansion pack is higher than those of its predecessor. It shows that, like the base game, exclusive content will be available to download free online.

Hi, the pricing is a little higher than The Sims 2 expansions for some of the following reasons:

• World Adventures provides lots of additional gameplay and items, plus adds storyline elements by building on goal oriented gameplay from base game
• It offers $10 (£6) value of SimPoints to be spent on TS3 Store
• It offers access to an Explorer’s kit - 15 exclusive valuable items to be downloaded upon product registration

Apparently the expansion is listed as £29.99 some places (around $46 US), and is currently listed as £24.99 on amazon and play.com. Obviously we're still enough distance away from the expansion for ANY price to be officially released, so I wouldn't take sites like amazon as Gospel. But, given the statement provided by Adroit, I would expect the expansions to at least be $10 or more above Sims 2 expansions.

Give it is adding more to the game play in the form of quests and other mini games within the main game, I can see a difference in price. Although it's still "The Sims", number 3 is varying greatly in some areas from it's predecessors. But, if the price jack is based on the 'included' bonus of SimPoints to spent at the TS3 Store, then I can't agree with it. Personally I don't use the store, so they are no real use to me.

I like a lot of the items there, but I can't justify spending more real life money on each piece of furniture I need. For one, there will always be free items out there, we just have to give the designers some time to work out how to create them, and secondly, it's WAY too easy to spend $20, $50 or even more in the store when you buy bits and pieces here and there. For a franchise that will set you back $500* or more by the time you buy all the expansions along the way, do you really want to double that by buying constantly from the store?

* based very loosely on the price of TS2 + expacs...