Is it really that bad?

[Geofa 108]

But suppose worldwide sales account for another 1 million, or 2 million: that's still just a drop in the ocean.Suppose the ACES team employed an average of 100 individuals. Obviously I don't know the right numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if that translates to overheads of about $1000 per head per month (rent, services and support) plus about $6,000 per month per head in salaries etc: ie, about $700,000 per month. Multiply that by 48 months and you get a staggering $336,000,000 for the four-year cost of keeping the team afloat. But let's say I'm grotesquely wrong, and those numbers should be halved: that still leaves $168,000,000 to be recovered from games sales over four years just to break even! Obviously not all of those costs would be hypothecated to FS. But an accountant probably wouldn't drill down to that level of detail, because (presumably) you could not hypothecate the team. Whichever way you cut it, you need to sell an awful lot of games to cover those overheads. That's why the size of the development team and the length of the development cycle are absolutely critical.With limited exceptions, producing PC games is only sustainable if it can be achieved by a tiny team with low overheads. This is because games do not command anywhere near the same margins as productive software. My guess is that ACES essentially became a victim of the same tendency to bloat that afflicts so many MS products. These are the respects in which, I suggest, the studio and/or its managers dropped the ball big-time. They needed a much smaller team concentrating exclusively, and ruthlessly, on turning out successive generations of product on a cycle of 2 years maximum. I suspect that they lost momentum and efficiency: if so, it will be difficult for others to recover it. However, in theory - with the right determination - it is conceivable that the product might be resurrected under a leaner and more focused team. Tim

Are your estimates also taking in that this was not a group working on a single top ten selling software title but also train sim and esp?

[McCrash 3]

Eveyone should notify MS and express their opinions on this matter.

[n4gix 4,947]

Are your estimates also taking in that this was not a group working on a single top ten selling software title but also train sim and esp?

First of all, prior to reorganization into four separate teams, there were more like 30-40 working in ACES at any given time.The strategic decision to create FOUR groups is what prompted the increase in employees:1. core-platform team2. ESP3. TS24. FSvNextEven so, I believe that MS have truly blundered by leaving major government and commercial partners who embraced ESP with their privates swinging in the breeze......not too many weeks ago Boeing was showcasing the 787 flightdeck simulator they'd built around ESP...At the very least, they should have left the core-platform team and ESP teams intact rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[KERNEL32 500]

I say we all send our empty FSX boxes to Microsoft HQ with a note of some kind...And if anyone has the original Train Simulator throw that empty box in too...

[jjf 23]

Hello everyone,An interesting article over at Appscout - basically saying MS still have some committment to the Flight Simulator franchise.http://www.appscout.com/2009/01/microsoft_...t_simu.php#moreSorry if this is old news already! Jonatahn

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

But suppose worldwide sales account for another 1 million, or 2 million: that's still just a drop in the ocean.... about $700,000 per month. Multiply that by 48 months and you get a staggering $336,000,000 for the four-year cost of keeping the team afloat.

Sorry to point out the obvious, but your math is off by a factor of 10.. :(

[Mango 0]

For everybody calculating ( :( ) - don't forget Acceleration. I am pretty sure MS broke even with FSX/Acceleration already. Anyways, like mentioned above, the dev cycle seems way too long for such a dev team size. Talking about efficiency which is part of management which is obviously not bean counter's strength. For now FS must get away from it's gaming part and concentrate purely on it's soul - the simulation. A small but highly specialized team to maintain and expand the ESP platform with 3rd party involvement for the eye candy, aircraft and other refinement. Way to go, is it ? Who wouldn't fork out 100 to 200 bucks for a highly sophisticated FS ? Maybe that's their plan... We'll find out.

[tfm 169]

Sorry to point out the obvious, but your math is off by a factor of 10.. :(

Oops: my bad (evidently I can't even use MS Calculator). Even so - red-faced - I still think it is easy to imagine how the numbers just don't add up for the bean counters (though perhaps they have my calculator skills).Tim

[guy 24]

Read Randazzo's statement on the Pmdg forum.It is rather optimistic.http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=241934Guy

[michal 44]

It is rather optimistic.

Yes, it actually surprised me.

[tfm 169]

Yes, it actually surprised me.

Fingers crossed.Tim

[Highmike 68]

Yes, it actually surprised me.

Me too! Of particular interest to me was his observation that FS development had become a subordinate project to ESP which was a more general enterprise simulation, and that the failure of ESP to win enough major clients inevitably brought the entire program to its corporate knees. Fascinating insight, eh!

[Guest ziporama]

Me too! Of particular interest to me was his observation that FS development had become a subordinate project to ESP which was a more general enterprise simulation, and that the failure of ESP to win enough major clients inevitably brought the entire program to its corporate knees. Fascinating insight, eh!

I can understand the difficulty in selling ESP to large corporations given the state of the development tools and learning curve needed to develop for the product. Yet, the product has an incredible rendering capability that in most cases blows away the latest professional simulators (the one's I've seen anyway) in the ability to render scenery and objects. I believe Robert is right about cut first, think later. Once an HR department is let loose on a target, it applies the HR-esque smarts of a sharp axe and goes right down the org chart without much worry for actual products or services impacted, especially the lateral impact to cross-functional teams, or intelectual capital. Only after it's all said and done and a need arises, there's the realization that the "goto" person is no longer available. I've personally been through that experience in a large company and there is very little humane behavior involved: "Thanks for your service, sorry to see you go, we've taken the taxes out of your severance to help you out, here's your $20 check, you're encouraged to apply for another position at a lower salary under our new 'improved' benefit package, hope you won't mind the reduction to one week vacation, good luck to you. Bring the next person in, I need to get all you guys processed before I go on vacation tomorrow." It is generally believed to work out in the end, and at the time, I was reminded that me and my colleagues were but a "resource" or "asset", not that different from the computer on my desk, except without a warranty and demanding costly benefits. I read recently in a Dailytech article http://www.dailytech.com/Microsoft+Misses+...rticle14034.htm on the subject this statement by a UBS Analyst:

Heather Bellini an analyst at UBS AG in New York, comments "If they don

[psolk 3,044]

I can understand the difficulty in selling ESP to large corporations given the state of the development tools and learning curve needed to develop for the product. Yet, the product has an incredible rendering capability that in most cases blows away the latest professional simulators (the one's I've seen anyway) in the ability to render scenery and objects. I believe Robert is right about cut first, think later. Once an HR department is let loose on a target, it applies the HR-esque smarts of a sharp axe and goes right down the org chart without much worry for actual products or services impacted, especially the lateral impact to cross-functional teams, or intelectual capital. Only after it's all said and done and a need arises, there's the realization that the "goto" person is no longer available. I've personally been through that experience in a large company and there is very little humane behavior involved: "Thanks for your service, sorry to see you go, we've taken the taxes out of your severance to help you out, here's your $20 check, you're encouraged to apply for another position at a lower salary under our new 'improved' benefit package, hope you won't mind the reduction to one week vacation, good luck to you. Bring the next person in, I need to get all you guys processed before I go on vacation tomorrow." It is generally believed to work out in the end, and at the time, I was reminded that me and my colleagues were but a "resource" or "asset", not that different from the computer on my desk, except without a warranty and demanding costly benefits. I read recently in a Dailytech article http://www.dailytech.com/Microsoft+Misses+...rticle14034.htm on the subject this statement by a UBS Analyst:I think this thinking by Wall Street says it all about how this sort of thing is being handled in the first place, and reflects what is more than a bit wrong in our economy, and has what's left of my hair standing.I feel strongly about the folks who are impacted on a personal basis knowing what they are now going through, and they have created an amazing experience for me and this hobby. I hope some common sense will eventually percolate back to the top - it will take time, in the mean time, some very real people are impacted, and I hope they fall back on their feet as quickly as possible.Etienne

I actually thing this could be hugely positive.It gives us simmers a definitive 5 year roadmap as to what we should be using. FS9 is screaming beyond belief right now, butter smooth at EVERY airport with all add-ons, sliders pinned and 90% AI. For me it will be my primary sim until FSX can match FS9 performance.It took at least 5 years after the release of FS9 to get us to this point with FS9 and FSX is not even close to the performance mark of FS9 yet. Personally I think we are still a few years off from that and in the interim if MS decides to sell or re-open the ACES franchise maybe we can finally get a new sim engine capable of driving more than 10 FPS that can actually offload physics processing to the GPU instead of strictly the CPU and see the same FPS we do in every other computer game/sim...I think this is an opportunity to leverage what we have for the next 5 years rather than worry about FSXI coming out and breaking all of our add-ons all over again. It gives simmers years of possible expansion between the two platforms and it gives developers the piece of mind that they can develop for both platforms indefinitely because the next release which breaks everything is no longer lurking around the corner.And like I said, if MS decides to rebuild or sell off the MSFS platform hopefully the next version will not still be running the same core sim engine from FS98 lol...Just my .02 but I don't think it is all that bad. In the scope of things I can't believe people are getting so upset. In the past week my company (Motorola) laid off over 4000 people, Circuit City is 30,000 people, Intel was 6,000 and Microsoft was 5000 I believe. So in one week, 45000 people went unemployed between 4 companies!!! I think we have bigger fish to fry and better things to cry about right now than FSXI.Cheers,-Paul

[january 19]

After the axe descended on ACES last week, a Microsoft spokesman in a PR release was quoted - "We are committed to the Flight Simulator franchise------". Now if you have just turfed out your existing FS crew, then I read the MS statement as meaning Flight Sim development will carry on elsewhere. Asia perhaps?Alex Reid