Its looking like Steve Ballmer will be leaving Microsoft based on the latest rumor mill postings. So I got a bug up my butt and sent an email to Bill Gates (not that he will actually read it) asking him to kick some butt back at the office and resurrect the FS platform (suggested that he call it FS Professional) because many of us simmers were dying for a new release.

 

Anyway if Ballmer is out it may be a good time to take advantage of the situation and get a formal petition (with as many sigs that we can muster) over to MS demanding a revival of the FS Franchise.

 

One can hope can't we?

 

Regard

jja

I hadn't heard that news. So when I want on a search, what I found seemed to be saying that Microsoft needed to move to the mobile devices market and Ballmer wasn't doing that fast enough, so he needed to leave. Of course, this was from Fox news.

 

I've already seen one hint that Microsoft seems to be intending to abandon the desktop market. So what's the deal? Windows 9 not running on desktops at all and Windows X (the last of the series, seems like that's the tend) will be developed on a Mac??

 

Does anyone have a link to news that makes sense?

 

Hook

I don't think that you will find any hard news regarding the internal workings at MS. The point is that Ballmer has been on the chopping block for some time and it may be a good opportunity for the FS community to rise up and make our position known.

 

Yes the desktop is a dying source of revenue for MS however the FS franchise is probably the last bastion of reliable profit for MS on the desktop. I also told Bill that I'd be willing to pay $99.95 US for a viable FS product.

 

Cheers

jja

I read this week where MS is stopping further development of DirectX. Several possibilities suggest themselves: 1) They are working on an alternate technology; 2) DirectX is deemed as perfect as it can get and no further tweaks are necessary; 3) they are abandoning the PC as a gaming platform.

Personally, I moved on any hopes of an FS revival. Besides, Robert from PMDG has stated that a new platform (that's not X-Plane or P3D) is coming down the pipes. That's what I'm excited about.

MS public company and they gotta make a profit to survive. Graphics are so good nowadays the improvements made are just marginal at a certain point. Desktop have a market, but 80% of computers user use laptops or smaller nowadays and it does not make fiscal sense to invest on desktop improvements like in the past. Would abandon the desktop for mobile market as CEO its all about making the money and giving the shareholders there return

What's going to change for the flight simmer?

 

Nothing.

 

Would be happily proven wrong.

The question remains - what happens when Ballmer is gone?

 

Cheers

jja

What's going to change for the flight simmer?

 

Nothing.

 

Would be happily proven wrong.

What's going to change for the flight simmer?

 

Nothing.

 

Would be happily proven wrong.

 

Exactly

Obviously I'm not inside the minds of anyone at Microsoft, but it would seem that from Microsoft's point of view, they probably feel like they *did* cave in and try to revive the FS franchise with Flight. Since that was a colossal failure, I don't have any hopes that Microsoft will then try to double-down and sink huge development dollars into delivering an updated global flightsim platform, which would no doubt be much more costly to produce than Flight was with its limited geographic area.

 

Whatever the "next" viable flightsim platform is, my guess is that it will be a future incarnation of P3D from Lockheed Martin, or a new franchise that is yet to be revealed by someone else. I just don't see it coming from Microsoft.

 

Honestly, I don't even care who develops it. Just get it done, and do all us hardcore simmers proud

Why exactly do you want Microsoft to have a flight simulator product that is dominant, much better someone like Eagle Dynamics, Laminar Research, IPACS, LM, A2A or PMDG be behind it.

MS IS a desktop oriented company. What is the Windows OS? Realizing that Flight flopped like it did don't you think that the higher ups are considering reverting to what was the successful business model for many years AKA the FS franchise? Seems all to obvious I know.

 

Cheers

jja

Realizing that Flight flopped like it did don't you think that the higher ups are considering reverting to what was the successful business model for many years AKA the FS franchise?

 

You forget that Microsoft decided, long before Flight, that developing FSX further was not longer commercially viable.The franchise may have been success in the past bit that's no assurance that it will continue to be successful in the future - the games market has changed beyond recognition during Flight Simulator's life time.

This is all just too insane.

 

20 years ago, every time I heard something good about Microsoft, Bill Gates was involved. Every time I heard something bad, Steve Ballmer was behind it. I've been waiting for him to leave for two freakin' decades!

 

I asked a question on the Microsoft Flight beta forum. Wouldn't it be good marketing to include the free download of Flight on every desktop Windows 8 install CD set? The answer was that it would take at least a year to convert Flight to run in RT (or whatever the mobile version is called). I'm like, who gives a rat's patootie about RT?? I asked about desktops! (I didn't post that, though.) Even with Flight development cancelled, it would still have been a profit center for Microsoft. Basically, it would be a kind of super Minesweeper, something to keep people occupied.

 

And now DirectX gets put into maintenance mode? This does not bode well. Anyone got a link to that?

 

All this seems to point to Microsoft abandoning the desktop market and going to mobile devices. And I don't mean laptops, either. You could run Flight on a laptop just fine.

 

I can't imagine anything but a desktop with a large monitor for a CAD/CAM application. Of course, we were running that under OS/2, but still. I'm pretty sure our biggest competitor was using Windows.

 

Somehow I can't imagine a world without desktops. Sure, the various mobile devices are convenient; my doctor carries his laptop into the examining room. But when he pulled up X-rays to show me some differences between a couple of ailments, it was on a desktop with a large monitor. First time a doctor has ever done that; I like this guy.

 

Oy.

 

Hook

All the ads I see on telly or billboards for Joe consumer are for Win8 on mobile devices, or the X-Box. I imagine the bulk of their desktop sales are for business applications. High end consumer flight simming fits in none of those.