FSX-SE DoveTail Games Buys Licensing Deal with Microsoft

[calooom 48]

http://www.dovetailgames.com/news/2014/jul/9/dovetail-games-licensing-deal-with-microsoft-takes-flight

 

 

The award-winning creators of the best-selling Train Simulator franchise have today announced a global licensing deal with Microsoft, granting them the rights to develop and publish all-new flight products based on Microsoft’s genre-defining flight technology. The company is currently investigating new concepts in this area and is expecting to bring a release to market in 2015.

In addition to this licensing agreement, Dovetail Games is pleased to announce that it has also acquired the rights to distribute the multi-award winning Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Gold Edition via Valve’s popular digital retail channel, Steam, entitled Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition.

First released in 2006, Microsoft Flight Simulator X is widely acknowledged as one of the most popular simulation products on the market. Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition will include the Deluxe Edition and the Acceleration Expansion Pack in one bundle. Dovetail Games will bring Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition to the Steam online gaming platform for the first time in late 2014.

“I am delighted to be working in partnership with Microsoft as part of this agreement,” said Paul Jackson, CEO of Dovetail Games. “We are thrilled to be exploring new flight simulation opportunities using Microsoft’s technology, and look forward to using our extensive expertise of Steam publishing to successfully bring Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition to a broad new audience on the Steam platform. This partnership is perfectly timed to support our expansion into new areas of simulation.”

Steve Bainbridge, COO at Dovetail Games added, “We are very proud of the strong community we have created around the Train Simulator series of products, and we are looking forward to extending our knowledge and experience into working closely with the flight simulation community. We know that they are a very knowledgeable, passionate and committed group of individuals and we welcome their feedback and involvement as we start to create the next generation of games in this area.”

“When it comes to licensing our simulation engine, Dovetail Games is the obvious choice for us to work with. We respect their approach in terms of delivering premium quality simulation games and look forward to seeing their vision of the next chapter in flight simulations unfold,” said Kevin Perry, Executive Producer at Microsoft. “In addition to that, they have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to launch simulation products successfully via online platforms, making them the ideal partner to distribute Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition.”

For further information please follow us at Dovetail Games Twitter and Dovetail Games Facebook.

For press enquiries please contact:
Lidia Rumley
Light Switch PR
E: lidia@lightswitchpr.co.uk
T: 01932 228465 / 07803 359805

 

So this clears up the mystery from last month.

 

Will be exciting and scary to think what these guys do with the licence. 

[FLEX1978 373]

I'm thinking worrying to be honest.  Other organizations made bids gearing more towards the medium/hardcore crowd, yet MS chose to go with these guy's.   

 

Good luck to them, but I am thinking this is heading towards the gaming market.  Anyway, I am sure that it will still please many.

 

Regards

[Gokau 4]

I hope they can offer free updates to existing FSX.(I know its prob. unlikely, but hey one can dream and be optimistic.)

[Falconfly 12]

Now this is interesting...

[Air1 136]

I hope this is good news for MS Flight as well. I will buy whatever it is.

 

Steve

[dighost 25]

This is freaking fantastic news!   Dovetail is passionate about simulations.  Maybe more importantly, they are mod-friendly.  Putting FSX on Steam is going to open the flood gates to new users.  

[calooom 48]

I'm thinking worrying to be honest.  Other organizations made bids gearing more towards the medium/hardcore crowd, yet MS chose to go with these guy's.   

 

Good luck to them, but I am thinking this is heading towards to gaming market.  Anyway, I am sure that it will still please many.

 

Regards

 

I'm inclined to agree it will follow the Rail Simulator model.

 

It's great news for the hobby nonetheless, but I'm not expecting massive hardcore sim changes. 

[MartinRex007 388]

So both LM and Dovetail have licensing agreements, or am I missunderstanding something here?

[G MIDY 64]

Expect to see FSX available on Steam later this year judging on the press release. I'm not too sure that this is will be a whole new simulator but just a rebadging of the existing platform. I think this will mainly just involve the integration of Steam into FSX and obviously all the online features that might entail... I'm not getting my hopes up with this one to be honest! They have mentioned a product being made available by next year and it would be stupid to start development on something they have no license for. I doubt you could develop something of any ground breaking scale within a year. Still anything new is appreciated and I hope this opens up the market to new things.

[tjh87 9]

Being someone who has invested into their Train Simulator Series, I'm worried about the possible results of this. Their Train Simulator series isn't that great, a lot of overpriced content if you ask me, with many bugs and issues upon release. Now FSX is not something that they developed, but they could easily start selling DLC for it with a similar pricing and feature range as their train DLC. They will more than likely do this with the next generation flight sim they develop. It's going to be a MS Flight style game I'm sure, buy scenery and planes...

 

They are old EA executives and they really don't care for the end user. Their support doesn't give you support for example, just a generic response message that doesn't answer your question, and they consider it answered. Unfortunately, I don't see this going well at all. At least there are other options. I could be wrong though, and I hope I am, but from what they have exhibited, the chance of this being stellar, or anything close, is slim to none, and slim just left the room. 

[LukasJ 0]

Get ready for a myriad of DLCs

[squerble 300]

Bad move here. It will drop a notch in its realism in the next incarnations and you'll be charged a ridiculous amount for poor quality add-ons.

[Boomer 1,617]

If anyone from EA (even past executives) is involved, it will be a disaster.  EA has consistently demonstrated contempt for their customer base.

[RatRace 4]

They are old EA executives and they really don't care for the end user. 

 

If by EA you mean Electronic Arts, I was a big fan of Flight Unlimited III.

 

It's going to be a MS Flight style game I'm sure, buy scenery and planes.

 

If it's a continuation of MS Flight, I'm all for it.

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

So are they just going to distribute the same product on Steam or will they have access to the source code, which means they can add improvements?