Well, there's a novel concept. Making business decisions based on what will sell the most rather than on what's morally correct. Shame on you Joshua Howard, for doing what everyone's been doing since mankind developed the ability to speak.

 

And exactly how much money is Microsoft making from the Flight franchise?

 

Yes, the goal is to make money.  But do you do that through short-term planning or long-term planning?  Reading your product correctly or misreading it?  Making good strategic decisions or bad ones?

 

The corporate graveyard is littered with the bones of companies where somebody in leadership said, "Forget all that other stuff - the goal is to make money!"

 

Why of course it is.

 

But how?  At what cost?  For how long?

Corporate stooges...all about the money, never about the passion. When corporations start heading in that direction, its all over.

 

Amen to that.

Every time I've seen a silly petition for fs11 I try and explain it to people that it doesn't matter. Ballmer set a new direction for both the OS and games: everything was about making the most "streamlined" mainstream products for the most casual dispassionate people ever.

Anything that wasn't simple shovelware that could be sold to millions of people in a year was deemed a waste of time. Hence why we got the massive joke that was "flight" instead of a proper continuation of the venerable FS series.

No petition that a couple hundred real enthusiasts signed was ever going to change that or even reach the top MS brass. Even if did they would just laugh it off and wipe their tears of laughter with hundred dollar bills.

 

MS isn't about making an easy-to-use yet open (i.e. you set it up and run your own apps) OS anymore. It's about trying to get apple users by making a locked down, no choices, store apps only OS which was a stupid idea to begin with. Apple customers couldn't care less about what MS offers.

MS isn't about making interesting games and sims with depth anymore, it's more interested in facebook/zynga players that can't be bothered to play a simple game for more than 30 minutes every third day when they're bored.

 

Here's a good glimpse into what Ballmer and his cronies wanted, maybe what his successors also want in the vain delusion they think they know how to "do it right":

Amen to that.

Every time I've seen a silly petition for fs11 I try and explain it to people that it doesn't matter. Ballmer set a new direction for both the OS and games: everything was about making the most "streamlined" mainstream products for the most casual dispassionate people ever.

Anything that wasn't simple shovelware that could be sold to millions of people in a year was deemed a waste of time. Hence why we got the massive joke that was "flight" instead of a proper continuation of the venerable FS series.

No petition that a couple hundred real enthusiasts signed was ever going to change that or even reach the top MS brass. Even if did they would just laugh it off and wipe their tears of laughter with hundred dollar bills.

 

MS isn't about making an easy-to-use yet open (i.e. you set it up and run your own apps) OS anymore. It's about trying to get apple users by making a locked down, no choices, store apps only OS which was a stupid idea to begin with. Apple customers couldn't care less about what MS offers.

MS isn't about making interesting games and sims with depth anymore, it's more interested in facebook/zynga players that can't be bothered to play a simple game for more than 30 minutes every third day when they're bored.

 

Here's a good glimpse into what Ballmer and his cronies wanted, maybe what his successors also want in the vain delusion they think they know how to "do it right"

Ballmer is out concerning his tenure at Microsoft. I'm sure his brain dead agenda will be modified a bit. How much, we'll have to see...

Mediocrity is just too common.  They are the majority...they will trample on the good and the talented over a period of time.. 

 

Hacks like Joshua will move on from one devestation and fallow land they helped create  to another and suvive like parasites. He left MS and he won't lose a wink over that...and he has moved on.. His journey will continue with the helping hand of all other mediocrities of the world.

Whatever the impact of Howard and the whole Flight debacle, looking at the big picture, it remains that MSFS doesn't make much sense as part of Microsoft's current portfolio.  They've never been particularly good at consumer entertainment products (remember Zune?), and they're preoccupied by much bigger issues, such as the fact that the world is moving from PCs to mobile devices, and Microsoft isn't built for mobile devices.  

 

This is a pretty common development in business - it's sort of a life cycle issue, the companies that dominate during one particular period usually don't dominate five or ten years later.  They're too busy doing what they do well at  a given time to notice or adapt to the next thing that's emerging.  The next thing belongs to new companies that can take the risk - in fact, have to take the risk - because they're not established in the current thing.  So an IBM world becomes a Microsoft/Intel world, then an Apple world, then a Google/Samsung world...

 

A labor-intensive, time-consuming, quality-oriented product like MSFS doesn't fit in a company that needs to move to low-cost, quick-turn programming for small-footprint devices.

 

It makes much more sense for a company like Lockheed Martin, which, though extremely big, operates in a much more quality-oriented world where high cost isn't necessarily a barrier.

So the russian and chinese target audience for Crytek's new product is either entirely composed of 12 year old guys or patriarchic idiots. Or they're simply stuck in the 90s. Interesting.

 

 

It makes much more sense for a company like Lockheed Martin, which, though extremely big, operates in a much more quality-oriented world where high cost isn't necessarily a barrier.

Don't forget the market. Turn a product for the Average Joe into something for both him and a professional target audience and you basically have a winner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whoever said that Phil Taylor saved the MSFS franchise by turning it into ESP and subsequently P3D: Yes, he basically did.

From a technical point of view, I don't understand why FS11 didn't happen.  FS11 with in a "Easy Mode" ... automate much of the aircraft and make the flight model easy = "Flight" -- that MUST be much easy path than building an entire  new "easier" flight simulator?

 

Extend/Fix FS10 (FSX), add an easy mode and viola, you have Flight (the wider audience) and you keep the existing audience.  But like I said before (in other threads), problems within Microsoft run much deeper than Ballmer alone.   Ballmer is going to be the fall guy, but there are many many more Joshua Howards in Microsoft that are just cashing in for as long as they can.

 

If anyone has kept up on Window 9 news, Microsoft are planning to push the "one UI for everyone and everything" even further -- they clearly aren't learning from their mistakes, which is unfortunate.

 

Rob

 

 

The latest version of Grand Theft Auto that came out just a few weeks ago, grossed $800,000,000.00. That's EIGHT HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS!. And that was just what they sold ON THE FIRST DAY. Somebody must know the market.

 

Yep:  they know how to appeal to society's LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR.

 

 

Don't forget the market. Turn a product for the Average Joe into something for both him and a professional target audience and you basically have a winner.

 

Yes, exactly.  You can keep generating sales from retail licenses, while at the same time you're selling big multi-license packages to training centers and such.  The latter is much more efficient.  The former helps cover your cost and generates other benefits, like the goodwill of the taxpayers who fund your big hardware.  Everybody wins.

 

The efficiency of business-to-business sales (big contracts, much easier maintenance and customer service) helps explain why you see some of the major 3PD's like Orbx, A2A and (in its own, standalone way) PMDG gravitating toward professional markets.  

 

They'll be happy to have us along for the ride but at some point we may find we're influential enthusiasts, not mainstream customers.

Isn't this just common or garden capitalism?

I am waiting to see how the Steam Box will change the PC market, I like the concept of being able to custom build a gaming PC, install Steam and that's it. No more MS.

 

Consoles are closed gardens but being able to custom build machines and install simple Steam O/S is the way to go for me. A year from now I could be a 99% MS Free Household with the exception of FSX....Just have to wait and see if FSX would work on Steam's Linux based O/S. If it doesn't work I can still do a dual boot with Windows 7 and FSX as well as Steam O/S just so I can continue to have FSX. There is always a way to make things work.

 

But this would mean I won't be purchasing MS Products anymore, just keep FSX running for as long as I can.

Isn't this just common or garden capitalism?

 

Good point - much as it hurts us, the tiny world of advanced civilian flight (yes, even our freeware is advanced for the uninitiated) makes no sense in the mega-corporate world of tens or hundreds of million dollar titles. I'm still amazed MS and their sock puppet thought they could possibly interest that market in their Flight 'ecosystem' (an innocent word forever tainted  :bad: ) I'd be willing to bet the hardware platform is also of little relevance. Civil aviation is for the special among us, not the average.

 

What we now see was probably inevitable - Flightgear on the one hand, freely supported by everyone with the time/interest (shows real promise, but a long way to go), or P3D on the other hand, a higher cost specialized training platform.

Isn't this just common or garden capitalism?

 

True - there's nothing exotic here.  But that doesn't mean that it's easy to get it right.

 

 

Good point - much as it hurts us, the tiny world of advanced civilian flight (yes, even our freeware is advanced for the uninitiated) makes no sense in the mega-corporate world of tens or hundreds of million dollar titles.

 

I can remember back to the time (c. 1989) when PCs were in the mainstream but still novel, and Microsoft was still an upstart relative to IBM, and you could find Bill Gates doing demos in retail stores of Windows 3.1.  I met him in a Software Etc. store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and tried to interest him in a monthly flightsim publication that I was trying to start.

 

He gave the envelope to an assistant and I never heard from Microsoft.  Wasn't surprised, wasn't expecting much.  But it shows you that even back then, Flight Simulator was becoming a relatively small fish in the big Microsoft business-software-oriented pond.

EDIT:

 

I just did a Google search on 'Joshua Howard Microsoft' not intending to see anything about Flight but rather his resume as to what he's done outside of Flight and all that came up was the failure of Flight. With a rap sheet like that with a simple search of his tenure at Microsoft why is this guy getting any jobs?

If all he did at MS was to fail at making the average Joe interested in virtual aviation then I don't think he has much to worry about. Everyone in the gaming industry knows that that's not just an uphill battle, it's like climbing Everest in sneakers.

 

As for those who are already into virtual aviation, I think we often have a very strong tendency to exaggerate our importance.

 

 

Just have to wait and see if FSX would work on Steam's Linux based O/S

 

It won't. Steam OS will only run Linux games natively. Windows and Mac games will be streamed from a PC or Mac elsewhere on the local network.