P3D Longevity

1 hour ago, Wobbie said:

It REALLY does not matter if LM stops or freezes development of P3D. 

FSX development was frozen many years ago, as was FS2004.

That certainly did not stop developers, both freeware & payware from supporting the sims. Just look at the stuff coming from Milton & team for FS2004!

Even if LM & DTG stop all development, developers will still carry on.

Remember, these guys only give us the sim engine... the developers make it happen for us!

That would actually depend on any agreements developers had with LM, and any agreements LM had with Microsoft. Theoretically it could result in a situation where licences were withdrawn and then developers might be on shaky ground from a legal standpoint. Not that I'm suggesting it is likely of course, but in such a scenario, you have to remember that the licensing of P3D from Microsoft is not the same as the original FSX licensing, nor will Dovetail Games have the same agreement with MS either. One would imagine that a company such as MS could get quite litigious about that kind of thing if they chose to, for example, they still hold the rights to the commercial name 'Flight Simulator', which is why even with the deals LM and DTG have, neither of them were able to call their new iterations of a sim using the ESP engine that name, and you can bet that they would have dearly loved to do so given the gravitas that name has.

In any case, whilst it makes for an occasionally interesting discussion, scaremongering rumours of P3D's impending demise are exactly that - rumours - and greatly exaggerated ones too.