Why did MS started up MFS again? 

 

 

I do not know, but it must be something about believing their new technology would revolutionize the game and make it superior to the other Flightsim games we have today. 

I believe it is all about Asure and AI technology that the other do not have. 

What do you think? 

Edited July 31, 20196 yr by nas123

Better graphics, better systems, better optimization and better technologies. 13 years of evolution on the gaming insdustry... 

Probably now they can reach things that with FSX was unimaginable.

And honestly, FSX has been the king of the sims until P3D3.X and XP11 went out. And even nowadays still has a huge public with its steam edition. Now imagine that with all those new technologies.

I think MS has a good market niche now. XP is good, but is far away from what MS has shown. And P3D... for me is still FSX. Not enough to enjoy it (at least without addons). 

Microsoft needs a couple of MS-branded showpiece games introduced alongside the new Xbox in 2020. The flight sim is one of them, the other is the new Halo game. Both might even be included along with a purchase of the new console as incentives. The fact that the official announcement page is under the xbox.com domain is a hint.

I know in this community we'd like to believe it's for the pure love of aviation and home simulation, that we're finally running hardware capable of the next steps in realism, etc. But this *is* Microsoft we're talking about, and Bill Gates is no longer running the show.

Even if this is the main reason (and of course I'm just speculating), we PC flight sim enthusiasts stand to benefit if they do it right. There is also the potential for growing the hobby if enough Xbox users get exposed to what we hope is a highly realistic civilian flight sim, although I remain personally skeptical on that point.

36 minutes ago, nas123 said:

Why did MS started up MFS again? 

Just a guess but I believe it's their first steps into building the virtual world.

A future digital world where you can do virtually anything, anywhere and anytime.

Sightseeing

Shopping

Fly Aircraft

Boating

Driving and Racing

Surfing

Sports and gaming of all types

Etc etc.

The matrix basically.

 

Wow... how about it was simply a decision based on the fact that Flight Simulator is the longest published software title and the one individual who hated it no longer runs Microsoft?

The industry is moving to streaming platforms Sony Google Amazon Microsoft, so you would want to have a board an appeal as possible for gamers and simmers flight simulator fits that bill.  

1 minute ago, WarpD said:

Wow... how about it was simply a decision based on the fact that Flight Simulator is the longest published software title and the one individual who hated it no longer runs Microsoft?

Maybe, and if that was the case they could have announced it at one of the recent flight sim conferences, or at Oshkosh. Instead, it was announced alongside the new Xbox, the new Halo, and their streaming Xbox Cloud service at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2019, a "gaming" venue. Another hint about priorities and motives.

BTW, I'm not predicting that the new MSFS will be anything less than what we're hoping for, but if we're talking "why now?" then I think we can't ignore the possible business motives including the tie-in with Xbox Scarlett and the Xbox Cloud streaming service. 

The “why” comes down to one simple reason: Microsoft feels they can make money from a new Flight Simulator.  If they didn’t then they wouldn’t be bothering because they are a business afterall.

Now, the question of WHY they feel they can make money from a new iteration of Flight Simulator is very interesting.

The brand still has enormous name recognition, and Microsoft lost to Sony soundly this gen in the game exclusives category.  MS needs more big name brands to draw attention and pull gamers in, so I’m sure they dug deep into their coffers and looked for games to resurrect in order to make Xbox and it’s game pass more appealing.  Flight Sim would work wonderfully as just such a game.  It’s something people find interesting but maybe not enough to actually buy it and try, but since it will be included with game pass then on its looks alone the new sim should garner a lot of attention.

Also, the Microsoft of today is a very different beast than the MS of ten years ago.  Their attitude has changed tremendously and they are taking keeping gamers happy much more seriously than they used to.  Minecraft is on all platforms, Halo (and all MS games) is coming to Steam as well as Xbox, they are incorporating some great into their game pass.  MS seems to be making it a priority to produce good games which players will be happy with, and their attitude adjustment is one of the reasons why I’m very optimistic about FS2020.

Maybe this interview gives us a hint, they need more first party franchises:

https://www.windowscentral.com/phil-spencer-comments-xbox-game-studios-content-quality

Why Flight Simulator? Well... we might know the answer in the coming months, when things get more clear to us, when the devs share more details.

Edited July 31, 20196 yr by ca_metal

Lots of great points in this thread..

I think the combo of change in leadership, new Xbox that could use something spectacular (and a well known brand) and crucially the scenery methodology all created the perfect storm.

I really think the ability to show off what they can do with their mapping data and computational wizardry is game changer here.  Doing the entire world using the very labor/cost intensive methods that add-on scenery developers use is simply of no interest and not a good business to be in for MS.

But - if they have a whole new way to do the scenery and can thus offer reasonably great global coverage it's a game changer.

I think there are a lot of interesting and new reasons they decided to give this a go again.

37 minutes ago, Mengy said:

The “why” comes down to one simple reason: Microsoft feels they can make money from a new Flight Simulator.  If they didn’t then they wouldn’t be bothering because they are a business after all.

+1

I don't foresee this one being a buy it once, then support and updates for the next however years without any an additional revenue stream.

 

47 minutes ago, Mengy said:

The “why” comes down to one simple reason: Microsoft feels they can make money from a new Flight Simulator.  If they didn’t then they wouldn’t be bothering because they are a business afterall.

They have always made money from sales of FS.  It was never, to my understanding, an actual financial loss.

$$$. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

1 hour ago, Paraffin said:

Maybe, and if that was the case they could have announced it at one of the recent flight sim conferences, or at Oshkosh. Instead, it was announced alongside the new Xbox, the new Halo, and their streaming Xbox Cloud service at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2019, a "gaming" venue. Another hint about priorities and motives.

Why do people keep bringing this up? It would have been insanely foolish to announce a game that will make them millions at an expo of 1500 people, or at an airshow. Doesn't matter who the target audience is. This gave them the best of both worlds, as a large number of flight simmers play other games as well (and even if they don't, they found out about it anyway). The work of reaching millions of people was already done by E3. Really smart move, as it exposes MSFS to many existing fans, and also shows potential newcomers how far the genre has come and may encourage them to check out our hobby. And the more people who buy it, the more resources go into developing the game.

The Flight Sim series was long used as a tech demo for Windows, so using it for the same purpose again makes sense. Great place to showcase new cloud services related to gaming and visualization.

As for being on xbox.com, they have been expanding the Xbox branding to cover all gaming on both the Windows and Xbox platforms. Seeing as the Xbox One already runs a version of Windows 10, consolidating both makes sense.