"Microsoft Sells License to FS Franchise" Part 2

[Dillon 2,197]

Well, hmph, it appears that simflight.com is saying that the licensee is one who is no stranger to the simulation market. 

 

 

Strengthens my belief that it's either Dovetail or Aerosoft. Either way, a new sim with the "Flight" engine with the scale of FSX would be immense. 

 

 

I was thinking one of MS's nome companies could have bought FLIGHT to further develop it to turn around and run on XBOX ONE.  Why do it yourself when you have coolaide companies out there that'll do it for free to be sold on your in house platform...

 

 

Flight(New Company) + E3 = New XBOX ONE title

[Ray Proudfoot 8,960]

Do we? Really? :Hmmmph: 

 

All we truly know is that the editors at "Simflight" have it "from reliable sources," which is to say, nothing concrete.

 

Bill,

 

This is what was posted on simflight... "We have now heard directly from reliable sources, who have requested to remain undisclosed, that the ‘franchise’ sold recently by Microsoft is not that of FSX, but rather that of the newer “MSFlight“.

 

I don't believe they would say something like that unless they were pretty sure of their facts. Your opinion may differ.

 

Perhaps I should have started my message "I now choose to believe..." :wink:

[pracines 823]

If this flight simulator includes the world, is "kind" to Pete Dowson, allows for 3rd party development, and is 64 bit, please  ( calling all simmers ) please ( calling all fs veterans) please ( calling all community leaders) get your "backwards" ( I emphasize back-wards) compatibility banners and burn them. Lets finally move on to higher goals. 

 

small print:

this message is not intended for MS flight lovers (see how fast it died? I don't want a sim that "will" die quickly)  

[sbclark 55]

As to a long shot speculation.............

 

I haven't seen anyone mention Garmin as a possible candidate.................this would could be a good opportunity for this company to provide a training platform for real world pilots, with the sim community providing "free labor" to beta test software enhancements and bug fixes.

 

Just another possibility!

 

Bill Clark

[joandreas 3]

I'm hoping that if/when the new owners announce anything this week, that they aren't simply going to say, 'Yeah, we bought it', but expand more vividly on what their goals are with the platform and the timelines to achieve those goals.  I also hope they come prepped to address key themes that get slung about these forms on a daily basis:

 

64 bit

backward compatibility

3rd party development

open architecure

 

They should address and dispell from their business model absolute failed ideas in the flightsim world, like DLC.  Just because they have bought the MSFlight licence doesn't necessarily mean they intend to follow the same business model as MS had proposed with Flight.  If they do intend to follow the DLC route, and skim the cream from developer's profits, then they may as well have tipped a truckload of cash down the biggest toilet imaginable.  If the new owner is Aerosoft, I doubt they would do something that foolish.

 

Microsoft flight is not backward compitable and i doubt it will be.

[User72 28]

I like the other way right in his post.  Less messy looking by requiring an extra post to get the point across...

  :t0152:

[EngineRoom 205]

Many people would see that as a viable economic model, but it is not "Microsoft scale".

 

Thanks for sharing this info Phil, I seem to remember you saying very much the same thing some years ago. So the problem would appear to be not that flight sims are unprofitable, but that they're not profitable enough for publishers with the deepest pockets, and too expensive to develop for the smaller niche publishers.

 

When I look at the likes of 777 Studios (now 1C Studios) and see what they did with Rise of Flight and are now doing with Battle of Stalingrad I am encouraged that a business that sets itself realistic targets and a sensible business model can make flight sims work in today's market. Other than that I'm thinking the hobby is now feeding more on spin off products from professional training applications - DCS, P3D, various MSFS addons, etc.

 

 

 

 

I know Aerosoft were discussing the possibility of producing a new sim platform a few years back, and at the time 'Flight' was announced they were pretty positive about it from what I recall - until everything went pear-shaped with MS.  My guess is that Aerosoft have bought it, although I would have thought they would qualify as a 'logical' purchaser

 

My understanding was that Aerosoft were initially wanting to make their own sim but when they realised just how much investment was needed they got cold feet and threw their weight behind X-Plane (hence the raft of Aerosoft scenery that got ported over to XP). Now with XP's glacially slow development I think Aerosoft have had second thoughts about that too.

 

 

 

 

Either way, a new sim with the "Flight" engine with the scale of FSX would be immense. 

 

It's an intriguing possibility for sure. Pretty much everybody who was involved with Flight has said the engine was capable - and indeed designed - to do so much more, but it was lumbered with an appallingly bad business model by a management team who didn't have the first idea bout the flight simulation genre or market.

 

 

 

 

Well all the good  hardcore sims I follow are crowd funded.

 

Don't count your chicks before they've hatched. Not one major crowd sourced sim has actually been released in a final version yet. In fact if you follow DCS you might find the events surrounding the Bezcl Studios MiG-21bis and the recent (as in the last few days) developments with DCS:WW2 are very illustrative of what can go wrong with crowd sourcing flight sims.

 

 

 

 

no third party development

 

You might want to check your facts. TS2014 and its earlier versions were all open to third party development - see the likes of Just Trains, Iron Horse House, Armstrong Powerhouse and the community produced freeware content available at places like UK Train Sim. All developing and distributing their work independent of the "official" DLC on Steam.

 

 

 

 

On a wider note about backward compatibility - I think we need to acknowledge that at some point insisting on backward compatibility for addons becomes a ball and chain around the ankles of the developers and prevents them from making the kind of really significant changes that might improve the sim in really meaningul ways. I'd be 110% behind biting the bullet and throwing off backward compatibility if it meant we could get a platform that was significantly more advanced and capable.

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

  :t0152:

 

"Agree"

[squerble 300]

What's the cost of all the FSX "DLC"?

 

I should have made my point clearer. Much of the DLC isn't much above what we'd expect as "default" aircraft in FSX, yet there's over $2,000 worth of it for a game which costs about $40. I don't doubt you could add together $2,000 worth of add-ons for FSX, but the quality of it would be much higher. With PMDG alone you're looking at a good $400 for everything (how they have the tenacity to still charge full price for the original 747 after announcing V2, I have no idea).

[HiFlyer 9,360]

Microsoft flight is not backward compitable and i doubt it will be.

 

Actually Stonlances Flight Toolkit made conversion of some FSX planes into FLIGHT possible, and in fact its been done, albeit with issues. He was just one person however, doing it in his spare time, but its a great proof of concept. FSX buildings have also been occasionally imported into FLIGHT........

I should have made my point clearer. Much of the DLC isn't much above what we'd expect as "default" aircraft in FSX, yet there's over $2,000 worth of it for a game which costs about $40. I don't doubt you could add together $2,000 worth of add-ons for FSX, but the quality of it would be much higher. With PMDG alone you're looking at a good $400 for everything (how they have the tenacity to still charge full price for the original 747 after announcing V2, I have no idea).

 

I purchased FLIGHT and all its DLC on steam for $20

[HighTowers 1,434]

Whoever it is for whatever it is and if and when there is further development, I just hope its taken seriously with a real hardcore flight simulation mindset rather than just some cool looking flying game with missions to go through a square. This will only work if there is 3PDs as it makes the product very robust in choices and competition, and we use real world simulation by products as they are now, like navdata updating, (world scenery and FMC updating) RW weather engine properly rendered, and a very accurate and realistic FDE *within the confines of desktop simulation) , full traffic in use, ATC, etc all the while having excellent performance or else this wont work and we might as well just stick with what we have and hope for their best improvements. Anything feeling like a console type game, it will hit some wicked windshear, crash and burn. 

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

Hardcore need no apply as it needs mass appeal or it not gonna work out. Xplane and P3d is for hardcore simmer. The new program not targeted at us longtime simmers anyways.

Hardcore need no apply as it needs mass appeal or it not gonna work out. Xplane and P3d is for hardcore simmer. The new program not targeted at us longtime simmers anyways.

[pmb 5,137]

Wasn't the success of the Flight Simulator Franchise just based on its scalability? A schoolboy could buy FS whatever in a supermarket to take off in Chicago Meigs for a circuit, and if he kept interested, he was able to handle a 777 using the same base System a couple of years later.

 

Flight lacked this scalability on the one end as does Prepar3d (purposely) on the other one.

 

Kind regards, Michael

[Glynn 405]

 

 

Flight lacked this scalability on the one end as does Prepar3d

 

What scalability does P3D lack ?

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

Okay, I am going to post a bit more at the risk of everyone here feeling they are being subjected to water torture...

 

Regarding reports from other sites that it is only the FLIGHT title... As of December 2013, the composition of the major teams in pursuit of this would not have been interested in a FLIGHT specific license (only). When we reported this on Sunday evening, we specifically stated:
 

AVSIM is being told by multiple sources that Microsoft, after years of dickering and sometimes murky intentions, has sold the license to the FS franchise.

 

The "FS Franchise" could consist of all products in the lineup or just one. My belief (not fact, but supposition on my part) is that it consists of the FS product line (that is FSX & FLIGHT). If not, some group paid a whopping amount of money for a single product that did not show much success (in MS' view) in the short time it was on the market. As I have stated earlier, FLIGHT and its DLC model did less than $10 million in the months that it was available. Is that enough encouragement to purchase that single product? I guess we'll find out sooner or later.