Well been looking through the FSX forum and man is it depressing. Seems just about every post in some way leads back to a comment that either MS is gonna do away with FS or that they are putting it onto the console. My thought is why? So what they don't sell as many copies of FS as they do other games but you can't deny the fact that they pretty much own the market on flight sim. The market is actually a pretty good sized market too and its better to make some money than none. Also how many kids do you know that would play a flight sim game on Xbox when they can be running around shooting people pretending to be a Navy Seal or something. I might be way off but its just getting old seeing all these FS doomsday post and comments. Sorry just had to blow off some steam after reading some of the post. I do think they have added some game like features from what I have see of FSX, but on the other hand everything we have now is still there so they haven't taken anything away.

I am surprised MS even bothers with releasing a PC game at all.Much less a PC flight sim.Over the years the PC section at stores has went from a store,to a wall,to a section,to a corner,to a shelve.Before long they will be kept under the counter in a box and you will need to ask for it.

I share your disappointment. I was disheartened to read in PC Gamer and elsewhere that the priority for X was to attract casual users to the sim with enhanced arcade features. I was even more disappointed when early preview movies began to emerge showing aircraft chasing big green circles in the sky trying to beat the clock or earn points. I don't think it will be sucessful honestly because better alternatives exist. We will have to stick with FS9 or count on enterprising 3rd parties to keep moving forward with improvements in realism, ATC, weather, scenery, record keepings, guages, AI behavior, navigation and flight planning etc. This may not be an altogether bad thing tho. The graphic interface of FSX seems improved and that may be nice for whatever innovations 3rd parties create. There is always the possiblility that X-plane will really take off. And then there is FSXI ...This isn't the place to discuss FSX specifically, but it is the place to raise the issue of how the flight sim community might be transformed by the infusion (assuming MS is successful) and a large influx of new users who are less interested in the correspondence between the sim experience and real worls flight and more interested in gamesmanship competition, etc. I think tis is an interesting question. My teen son and I are both avid gamers, but very different. I respect his style but it is not mine, and vice versa. His world alternates among 1st person shooters, RTS games, combat and hosted server games with friends around things like Half Life 2, Counterstrike, etc. His emphasis is on speed, reaction time, efficiency, shortcuts, mods, and "cheats". he plays a game immersively for a time and then drop it and moves on to another. After a time, he will return to the game when he thinks it has become fresh again and will play it extensively for a time. The forums he participates in also have a very different tone. The average age is pretty young and there is a lot less mutual help and more testoterone-driven teen bragging etc. The future of AVSIM if MS succeeds?To qoute David Bowie: Turn and face the strange. Ch- Ch- Changes.

>Over the years the PC section at stores has went from a>store,to a wall,to a section,to a corner,to a shelve.Before>long they will be kept under the counter in a box and you will>need to ask for it.>This is so true and very sad. Gamers demanding the highest eyecandy hasn't helped (i love eyecandy too), but I think it has caused pc gaming to be in the peril it is in now. Along with no standardization, unlike with consoles.I can't even get FS9 to look decent on a big widescreen TV in the livingroom, but if i had a console, I could play games (without all the niffy features) on a huge 50 inch TV. Maybe I would find FSX or FSX-XI better on a huge screen for the immersion factor, even if I am play it on a console...the cost would be lower too. :-( My 3 year old pc "gets by" playing FS9, but I have to forego most of the cool addons, unless I want to upgrade. So I forego better ground textures, better skies, Track IR4, Etc.Awww, who am I kidding, my next pc will be a conroe, with a D10 video card and with Vista---at least 2,000 dollars, just to play FSX and all the cool addons :-) that I know will not handle the newer FSX addons in another 2 years. The death spiral goes on. :-)Viva PC gaming!:-(

P.S. JIMJAM; the latest issue of PC Gamer has an article on how MS has started and iniative to reclaim and revitalize the PC platform sections of retail outlets. They have infused some cash and organization capital to do things like standardize the look and feel of the area, retail boxes, banners, inclusion of demos that shoppers can play (every 6 year old kid knows to run to the game section to play the consoles--MS wants to compete), etc. They want the PC section to rival the console section in size and vitality and their initiative is not limited to promoting MS products solely. It was interesting and I think a very positive development.

The best thing that could happen is that if another developer came out with a "real" flight sim that challenged FSX.I mean MS came out with only 1 patch in over 3 years and have basically let whoever do whatever they want to with the sim. Maybe its tradition,loyality or Gates himself likes to fly but as a profitable, worth expanding product of MS,I cannot explain its continuance.OH the days of old when the shelves were packed with flight sims and they were considered a developers flagship product.If profit were the only motive, call it something like, FSX Alien Attackers or simular. Aliens infest the cites and you must exterminate them with armed planes with lasers. Lots of explosions and destruction. It would be a BIG HIT.Whenever we have family visits and the boys want to fly, the first thing out of their mouth is, Where are the guns? What do you blow up?Showing them a ILS approach or how to program the FMC just does not impress them.

>The best thing that could happen is that if another developer>came out with a "real" flight sim that challenged FSX.http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v615/Dar...0/checkmark.gif----------------------------------------------------------------"The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender."Proverbs 22 : 7

For us FS is a platform. Serious simmers replace just about everything default with addons: aircrafts, gauges, weather, texture...Personally the "arcade mode" in FSX doesn't bother me because I'll just never use it. All I need from MS is a platform for all my addons and I think FSX will live up to this task and do better than FS9. Given that, I don't mind if MS puts in some new stuff to atract new users. If they can make more money that way, they may actually want to keep FS alive longer.Jason

>>The best thing that could happen is that if another>developer>>came out with a "real" flight sim that challenged FSX.>Technically "real" flight sims are those by Elite & CAE etc. Taking Elite products, they are quite different animals from MSFS. I doubt most who love MSFS will even like Elite stuff.Jason

FS Alien Attackers! Indeed,I never feel more like a flight sim geek than when i start telling the wife and son about some ILS I just shot or some new scenery and their eyes glass over. "You know you're really a flight sim geek if you've ever ...brought up the Reality XP Flight Line N gauges at dinner" :-)As I said, it isn't necessarily bad that MS has moved away from "As real as it gets"; it could be an boon for 3rd party developers if the platform is sound. There are some know limits in the platform concerning AI, weather, instrument/guage and flight dynamics that I hear developers refer to often however. (Take a look at the web site for the new G1000, where the developers have a list of things they can't implement because of inherent limitations of the sim, for example) It is a shame if MS misses this opportunity to address those that could be changed. But that's life. I've never used X-plane but I have a friend who swears by it. Who knows the possibiliies.The fun question is what might happen if the center of gravity of the user base shifts toward an early teen dominated "gamer" group hooked on arcade and multiplayer competitive style play. It is interesting to wonder how communities like AVSIM will change and adapt. I think my son would find this forum a bit dull since all the flame threads get locked!

The decline of PC games on the shelves is partially to blame on EBGames/Gamestop. Over the years they have transformed into a console-only store and have become a popluar hangour for teens. Every WalMart or independent computer chain (CompUSA/Microcenter) has a better selection nowadays.

I just left the local mall and dropped in the EB games which I had not visited in over a year. The pc games were on a floor display about 5 feet long by 3 1/2 ft tall. The only flight title I saw was 1 copy of x-plane in a ragged looking box.

The demise of PC based flight simming through MSFS has been "predicted" for years now. May I suggest somebody who is going to the coming AVSIM Convention this Sept. tactfully confront the MS team there and flat out ask them. I know they are not likely to tip their hand in total with regards to the future of MSFS, but it's better than the every 6 months rumors that fly around here about the imminent demise of or conversion of MSFS to xBox or whatever the lastest rumor is. I too hate the way that EBGames and such retail outlets have totally catered to console absorbed teens and appear to be ignoring us PC based gamers, but that's the nature of the marketplace, I simply refuse to believe that MSFS can be successfully converted to a console game without stripping out many of it's very successful features, just doesnt make any sense to me at all.Randy Jura, KPDX

Interesting thread. Made me take a peek at the last AVSIM demographic survey regarding age and it became clear that MSFS is not a young person's game/hobby.The surveyed showed that the majority of simmer's were between 30 to 60 years of age. Although the cost of the sim itself is moderate, once addicted to addons, tweaks, etc. the cost balloons way outside of most young people's pockets.If MS puts the game on a box, I don't really care. FS9 has a lot of life left in the way of addons and if I have to I will be perfectly content to fly it into the next world. :-halo

A couple of years ago I recall reading that FS was one of the top selling games of the year. Not the top, but very far up the ladder and competitive with some pretty impressive games. Don't know if that is still true, but it has a large base. If MS is successful by pitching FSX toward more casual users, it could zoom up again I suppose.interesting point about EB.