Flight is a very nice looking and to some extent a well thought out "free" game. But someone had to pay to get it built, and people / resources cost money. Programmers do not come cheap. Life today is very expensive. To give something away free that is expensive, re-coop that loss, then make a profit with a niche and fickle market of flight sims seems risky. What does a large project like that cost? Several years of work, free! What say you? I hope they make a profit for further development. Be great to see it become very successful.

Edited March 2, 201214 yr by drumsonly2002

I would say that the development took a few million.The team is somewhere around 50-60 members so I would assume that they all had important jobs. (Which require lots of $$ for salaries and research)

$3,674,025.78 USDAnd a few stock options.

Note there's hardly any marketing for MS Flight when compared to other games like Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars The Old Republic. Most casual gamers don't even know it exists.

I'd love to do an analysis of their operating statement and balance sheet.

The business model is not really that unusual. In the lead-up to a possible Aerosoft flight sim I had suggested the possibility of such a model, since I had seen it successfully used before.If millions of people end up downloading the free version, even a relatively small percentage sticking around long enough for the occasional DLC purchase can add up to some fairly big money. In fact if you think about it, the entire enthusiast niche comprising Aerosoft, Orbx, Avsim and lots of others exists almost solely off the dregs of the remainder of the people who purchased FSX and its predecessors and stuck around afterward.If MS can retain interest long enough to create an ongoing flight community, that could be some quite big money coming in to recoup their investment.