The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies expansion pack looks like the small business overhaul I’ve always wanted dash.wood@futurenet.com (Dashiell Wood) | usagoldmines.com

• The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies expansion pack launches next month
• It lets you set up your own small business
• It includes new skills, aspirations, items, and more

The next expansion pack for The Sims 4 will launch on March 6 and it’s one that I’ve always wanted.

As the name would suggest, The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies focuses on allowing you to set up your own small business, with loads of new skills and gear to help you create your own dream shop. You will have plenty of freedom over how to earn Simoleons, with a new ticket kiosk item allowing you to charge customers an entrance fee or fee for their time spent on the premises.

Want to build a gym, art gallery, or even a nightclub? This will finally let you do just that. You will also be able to designate a specific area of your home as open to the public (or even an employee-only space for up to five Sims that you’ve hired) preventing random people from just showing up in private parts of your house.

New skills are also included in the pack, including a tattooing skill that lets you create and share your own custom designs. This is on top of a pottery skill which sees your Sims make their own usable ceramic objects like plant pots. Presumably, you will be able to sell your tattooing skills or clay creations to eager customers.

This is all brought together by the new Idealist and Shady traits, which help you gear your character towards certain ways of running a business. Business growth is rewarded with new Business Perks, with Dreamer and Schemer that are ideal for running a by-the-books or more dubious enterprise respectively.

On top of this, there will be two new aspirations: Esteem Entrepreneur for those keen to build a flourishing shop and Master Mentor if you’d prefer to focus on teaching others your skills.

Of course, it wouldn’t be an expansion pack for The Sims 4 without the addition of a new town. This time it’s Nordhaven, a Scandinavian-themed city with a historic old town and trendy up-and-coming district.

All things considered, it looks like a pretty well-rounded pack – even if part of me thinks some of this should have been included in the The Sims 4 Get to Work expansion pack back in 2025, which first introduced retail lots. Still, I’ve been quietly hoping for a small business overhaul, so I can’t wait to dive in when it arrives.

The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies will be available on all the platforms where The Sims 4 is currently playable, including PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. That’s on top of Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PlayStation 5 via backwards compatibility.

You can pre-order it now for $39.99 / £34.99, with early purchasers bagging the ‘Set Up Shop’ digital content pack that comes with a cool statue, sweet treat display case, and special lamp.

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