Found this over at gamespot.com makes an interesting read :)
Yesterday's news of SimsVille's cancelation came as a surprise to Maxis' countless SimCity and The Sims fans. After all, SimsVille promised to combine gameplay elements from those two respective series of city-building and life-simulation games, which have proven so successful to the company in recent years. We received word of the sudden cancelation from a high-level and reliable source at Maxis, who chose to remain nameless in our news story, and while that person provided us with some important details about the decision to cancel the game, we still had many unanswered questions. What were the specific reasons for SimsVille's cancelation? Who made the final decision? What will become of the game's impressive 3D technology? For answers to those questions and more, we sat down with Maxis' director of marketing, Patrick Buechner, who was able to shed some light on yesterday's unfortunate news.
GameSpot: Patrick, was it Maxis or Electronic Arts that decided to cancel the game?
Patrick Buechner: The decision definitely came from within Maxis. It was a studio decision that involved the members of the SimsVille design team as well as a number of senior [executives]. At Maxis, we constantly evaluate all of our games during different stages of development, and during the constant review process for SimsVille, we decided that the game didn't live up to our standards.
News source and whole interview: gamespot.com
