Electronic Arts has a lot of best-selling franchises, with the likes of Need for Speed or its famed sports series, Madden or FIFA. But none of them have a longer-lasting appeal and the opportunity to generate further income through add-ons like its Sims franchise.

In further testimony to the popularity that the life simulator enjoys all over the world, the company has just announced that the third numbered iteration in the series, The Sims 3, has sold over 1.4 million copies for the PC and Mac platforms all around the world. This number is even more impressive as it has been achieved in just one week since it was released in stores.

A big factor in the popularity that the game has enjoyed, and in large part in the piracy problem it has been going through since before it was officially released, is the much softer DRM measures that were taken for it. Gone is the infamous SecuROM system, which is replaced by a simple disc check in order for people to play the game, thus eliminating a lot of problems for both EA and the end-users, unlike what happened with Spore last year.

“We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future,” the company said in a statement.

The title, created by the team on Electronic Arts' Redwood Shores campus, has also earned some very positive reviews from gaming critics and specialists and is certain to keep on selling for quite some time now, given the proven track record of any Sims release. Look forward to our review at the end of this week.