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Microsoft - the great enigma? And it's continued failures.

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So why is this in the FSX Forum?

 

Its in a forum called 'Hangar Chat' - a forum for just general chat, I believe. And the opening post asks 'How does this relate to FSX ?...and then goes on to answer that.


Surely not everybody was kung fu fighting.

https://rationalwiki.org

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Hope you don't mind Rob, but I think it would be better to move this one to Hanger Chat. Also thanks for posting your thoughts and this thread, its an interesting read.

 

Don't mind at all.

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It is now Paul, after I sent in a Report.

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I disagree with the statement that the decision by Microsoft to cancel it's flight simulator development had nothing to do with demand. Like it or not even FSX was not a big seller, certainly not in comparison to other games and most likely not enough to justify the development cost.

 

FSX was a massive upgrade over FS2004, but to develop further a complete code renovation was required, and an element of that was shown in Flight. Ultimately though, to develop a sim to today's standards would be a cost that would be completely unjustifiable. You mention that 3rd party developers wouldn't exist unless FSX was very successful, but most publishers operate on tiny margins. OrbX still isn't profitable (by Jon Venema's own admission). Very few developers are in the business for the money.

 

Surely the low adoption rate of Flight (a free platform) tells you everything you need to know.

 

Microsoft won't make another sim - the only hope is that their licensing agreement with Lockheed Martin develops to a point where general use is permitted, but even then I doubt LM's goals would be in line with our desires.

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Obviously bored Jim.

 

Jas

 

Obviously I know a FSX thread when I see one.

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I disagree with the statement that the decision by Microsoft to cancel it's flight simulator development had nothing to do with demand. Like it or not even FSX was not a big seller, certainly not in comparison to other games and most likely not enough to justify the development cost.

 

FSX was a massive upgrade over FS2004, but to develop further a complete code renovation was required, and an element of that was shown in Flight.

Considering that FSvNext was already nearing the end of the Alpha testing, and less than a few months from Beta testing, what was the sense in closing down the project, firing the staff, then paying six to stay long enough to archive all of the already completed work?

 

It would have cost less to complete FSvNext than it did to start from scratch on the failed Flight paradigm.


Fr. Bill    

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     Avsim Board of Directors | Avsim Forums Moderator

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For those that haven't read it, this is a good article covering Microsoft's performance and changes over the past 10 years.

 

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer

 

Ballmer is good at dismissing products that MS ends up having to catch up to.

 

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/30/3931846/steve-ballmer-on-small-dropbox-users-interview

 

Don't forget to check out the pricing model MS is using for Office 2013. It's all about trying to force people into a subscription model that no one other than the bean counters at MS wants. At least at the $100/year price. Good news for competitors though.

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Considering that FSvNext was already nearing the end of the Alpha testing, and less than a few months from Beta testing, what was the sense in closing down the project, firing the staff, then paying six to stay long enough to archive all of the already completed work?

 

It would have cost less to complete FSvNext than it did to start from scratch on the failed Flight paradigm.

 

Whilst I don't know the intricacies of the process and how far FSvNext was developed, the fact that it was late in the development process doesn't save it from critical review.

 

It's difficult to have conversations on here given that you obviously know more than I do but can't discuss it openly. Regardless, I imagine that a lot of the work from FSvNext went into Flight anyway, and the fact that it was canned at such a late stage gives an indication into what they expected. I'm sure you'll agree that FS development is no money-spinner.

 

My understanding is that MSFS was never a financial success for MS, and that it took the backing of Bill Gates to keep it running for as long as it did.

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I disagree with the statement that the decision by Microsoft to cancel it's flight simulator development had nothing to do with demand.

 

It was Phil Taylor (FSX PM) who suggested it wasn't sales problem. Also, one of the Aces team indicate they reached the 1,000,000 sales mark (that was a long long time ago) -- which isn't too shabby and Microsoft considers anything over 1,000,000 sold (in the game world) as a financial success.

 

MS Flight was a classic example of Microsoft executives not understanding what they had with FSX -- what is in MS Flight that the "casual" gamer/simmer doesn't already have in FSX? FSX has an easy mode (turn realism way down), it has "adventures", you can just hop into an FSX aircraft and go fly ... so it was already available to the "casual" gamer. The only way I could understand a decision to give MS Flight funding when they already have a product that could do the same, is if that executive giving the go ahead didn't look at what FSX was about ... didn't understand the support community, the 3rd party community, etc. etc.

 

Microsoft did the same with Age of Empires, a huge financial success for them (all expansions in the AoE series net 15,000,000 sales) with a grow community base and then they just stopped at AoE III ... nobody knows why ... and you guessed it, several years later Microsoft go and produce Age of Empires online ... play for free but you'll need to pay if you want to actually play beyond a tiny world ... and guess what, Microsoft cut funding for that also (no more new content to be produced). Again, Microsoft have transformed a successful product into a failure -- again, a complete lack of understanding what they have and how to best move it forward.

 

It a rinse and repeat cycle with absolutely NOTHING being learned by their failures -- just speculation that is ultimately wrong and sends them off in to another direction of failure.

 

Ballmer is good at dismissing products that MS ends up having to catch up to.

 

Agree -- I recall him laughing hysterically when interviewed (on TV) regarding the iPhone (this was very early days of the first iPhone) ... quote "nobody is going to pay that much money for a phone". Again, complete lack of understanding, knowing the market, and vision. You would think that someone who draws that much money would be a little more "in tune" with the computing market, the mobile market ... I mean, that is one of his primary responsibilities as CEO.

 

Here is that Ballmer interview:

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What if he meant to say "nobody is going to pay that much money for a *Windows* phone"... Also I'm not certain we won't see another FS from MS. FLIGHT gave them everything they needed to work out the cost of doing FSX over. All the MS FSs were never making enough money to be realistic compared to what they really do they were just prestigious, so I think they could turn up any time. Windows 8 is good, and the tiled page is misunderstood.


Steve Waite: Engineer at codelegend.com

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What if he meant to say "nobody is going to pay that much money for a *Windows* phone"...

 

Well, the point is that before the iPhone came out, Windows Mobile's market share was increasing and Ballmer thought they knew best. Then the iPhone came along. Read the market share numbers in the Wiki article linked below to see the results. The iPhone came out in 2007 for reference.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile#Market_share

 

Just a few weeks ago Home Depot announced that they were rolling out 10,000 iPhones across the company. No hint of Windows Phone 8 anywhere.

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Still looks very thin to make anything of it looking from his point of view. Of course everyone knows people swan around with iBling now, but it was never a market MS would have looked comfortable entering. It's a moot point.


Steve Waite: Engineer at codelegend.com

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Yes, clearly it is incompatible with a PC. That's why I have had very minimal, if not no issues at all since I got it back in December. Windows 8 is the same as Windows operating system we've used for years, but with much better performance, a cleaner UI, and the Metro start screen.

Can't agree.

BSODS, no safe mode from the F8 key - have to use SHIFT+F8 and jump through hoops to get to safe mode.

Disconnecting joysticks, no answer or reply from MS about this - any more?


Jude Bradley
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ATC: Yeah, it's OK. He's not hungry.

X-Plane 11 X-Plane 12 and MSFS2020  🙂

System specs: Windows 11  Pro 64-bit, Ubuntu Linux 20.04 i9-9900KF  Gigabyte Z390 RTX-3070-Ti , 32GB RAM  1X 2TB M2 for X-Plane 12,  1x256GB SSD for OS. 1TB drive MSFS2020

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Look at the market valuation for the past decade and ongoing policies like stacked ranking that carried on for years on end created a culture where employees compete with each other instead of the market. Then it's no surprise that decisions to throw away an ecosystem like the FS franchise came to mind.

 

It made them profit at the time and if it had an app store in the current version would be making them even more money. Percentage wise the market is small but when the market is the world it can still be a nice profit.

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