Well, the term "slobbering masses" isn't one that I would have used, but if you think that a Microsoft Flight Simulator on console will be anything other than a dumbed down product for casual gamers, then think again.

Guys, after reading thishttp://www.edge-online.com/features/is-mic...ly-committed-pcI think the question to be answered will be no longer "Is MS still committed to FS franchise?", but "Is MS still committed to PC games?"Under such a light, the 'encouraging news' spanned around by MS have the same taste of the carefully choosen words a medician says to a patient before announcing him that he's going to die within few months.

Guys, after reading thishttp://www.edge-online.com/features/is-mic...ly-committed-pcI think the question to be answered will be no longer "Is MS still committed to FS franchise?", but "Is MS still committed to PC games?"Under such a light, the 'encouraging news' spanned around by MS have the same taste of the carefully choosen words a medician says to a patient before announcing him that he's going to die within few months.

I quote from the link:"A PC strategy game might sell 100K. A flight sim could sell half of that in a year." If that's true I'm surprised ACES has lasted as long as it did.

What, that console users are "slobering(sic) masses"?

That's a flame war for another day.

I quote from the link:"A PC strategy game might sell 100K. A flight sim could sell half of that in a year." If that's true I'm surprised ACES has lasted as long as it did.

Whoever wrote that is out of touch with reality. The only published figures cite 1 MILLION FSX copies last year... for the US alone. No one outside of MS corporate knows what the total world wide sales were.

Whoever wrote that is out of touch with reality. The only published figures cite 1 MILLION FSX copies last year... for the US alone. No one outside of MS corporate knows what the total world wide sales were.

Undoubtly, the impressive sales data about FSX make even hardest to understand where MS is really planning to go........But, just consider the article's author might be just speaking about example figures and not real sales data.Then, if what's written in the article is true, console games sales are far larger than FSX ones (and larger than PC games sales in general), and this's the unique thing making sense for MS's bean counters.Btw: in Italy, where I live, PC games do occupy a very little space in the stores, and you need to really search for the hidden corner where they've been hidden in the unbordered ocean of shelves filled with console games (sadness :( ).This makes me to think that really the FS series had become in the latest years a niche product within a niche market.Or even a top seller but anyway within a progressively narrowing market, which is in any case NOT making sense for MS (see above).

Whoever wrote that is out of touch with reality. The only published figures cite 1 MILLION FSX copies last year... for the US alone. No one outside of MS corporate knows what the total world wide sales were.

Can you give me a link to the published figures for 2008?

Can you give me a link to the published figures for 2008?

http://www.gamespot.com/news/blogs/rumor-c...control;title;1I'd go to Phil Taylor's site for info and links.http://www.futuregpu.org/2009/01/end-of-er...flight-sim.html

IF FS was to come back, it seems to me it would be as payable down-loadable content, ie an FS base system basic and more for casual gaming.For more serious simmers, I would imagine that MS would use a highly detailed version of (tileproxy) MS Live Earth, where you would pay to download the area's your flying over or geographic regions.Probably the area's you pay to download would only work for a specific period, before you needed more credits, more down-loadable content would be available via the live system to download third party add-ons (planes weather scenery).Shame though as I was counting the days for fsnext to arrive :(John

I wouldn't read into these doom & gloom news about PC games. The Sims still makes loads of money. So did Spore this year with breaking several sales records. On the other hand, casual games for PCs have really taken off. The real problem isn't the PC. The real problem is the risk in development cost - this includes consoles. Like movies, blockbuster video games costs millions of dollars to make. George Lucas predicts that blockbuster movies soon will be a thing of the past and technologies like youtube will take over. One thing to realise is that only 10% of video games and movies actually make money. Casual games cost a fraction to make and the profit margin is big with risk being low. The future of gaming and movies is looking different than where things are now...

What I find difficult to reconcile is that Microsoft makes billions a year (they even boasted having 50 billion dollars that they didn't know what to do with) decides to "layoff" employees to stay in the black. Other than the xbox, what's eating MS? My speculation is that MS is restructuring again. They're going to slowly phase out PC games and focus on their beloved fat boy the xbox. Thanks to the pirates out there, they've driven up prices (why do you think Vista was so expensive and hard to activate?) and companies like EA and MS are abandoning the PC platform in favor of a more secure and less pirated platform like console games.I believe my statements with an 80% certainty.

Personal Computers ----> WWW ------> Cell Phones ----- Whats the next world changing technology. ?Virtual Reality ? ( What ESP has the potential to become or evolve into ).#1 priority - 100% owership and control . Hence, the last weeks actions.FSX/ESP carried too much Baggage. (Sounds familiar -- Remember History: the 1st Microsoft OS !! )

Flight Simmers are not the only ones affected by this . The Rail sim community has taken a hit as well as the Aces Studio was supposed to release a new MS train Simulator this Holiday season.

The rail community situation is particularly tragic.I agree there

http://www.gamespot.com/news/blogs/rumor-c...control;title;1I'd go to Phil Taylor's site for info and links.http://www.futuregpu.org/2009/01/end-of-er...flight-sim.html

Thanks, but your links are secondary sources. Do you have a link to NPD which seems to be the original source?

Well, the term "slobbering masses" isn't one that I would have used, but if you think that a Microsoft Flight Simulator on console will be anything other than a dumbed down product for casual gamers, then think again.

What are the technical reasons why Flight Simulator cannot be successfully ported to a console?