MS is doing it again for simple reasons, money and visibility of the brand.

MS FSX has been one of the most successful blockbuster in the gaming history, even 15 years after its release is being played in Steam and its spinups too like P3d and Xplane.

The issue here is that FSX was created by Aces Studios while nowdays MS seeks ( pls ignore the marketing mantras.. ) for money and brand visibility only, they aim mostly to attract new young gamers and in order to do that the product must be simple, not a simulator with GPS fixes and complicated approach charts which might scare the new comers.

In order to make it quickly wide spread it must be colored, simple and immediate, just like an arcade should.

 

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Edited August 1, 20196 yr by Guest

22 minutes ago, Mark II said:

The issue here is that FSX was created by Aces Studios while nowdays MS seeks ( pls ignore the marketing mantras.. ) for money and brand visibility only, they aim mostly to attract new young gamers and in order to do that the product must be simple, not a simulator with GPS fixes and complicated approach charts which might scare the new comers.

In order to make it quickly wide spread it must be colored, simple and immediate, just like an arcade should.

Please share with us any sources for any of that wild speculation..

20 minutes ago, Mark II said:

In order to make it quickly wide spread it must be colored, simple and immediate, just like an arcade should

You may be right...but I’ve seen no evidence to suggest this will be so. I’ve also seen no evidence that it won’t. Speculation is fun, but geez I wish people would stop speaking as if they had some authority. Not singling out just you, Mark II. It’s pretty pervasive throughout this forum. 

All this being just IMO, of course. 😉

I think it  has more to do with capitalizing on the development work that has been invested by Lockheed Martin that MS receives essentially for free and combining that with hololens, VR and AI technology.  As far as the business market - will we end up with MS servicing the gamer/consumer market and P3D servicing the government/enthusiast/pro-sumer market.? X-plane certainly has a place and is attracting some excellent developers and features, IMHO, just implementation of many things such as Ortho for XP for example requires above-average hardware and tech skills which is a barrier to some.  It's an exciting time, just hope we don't get the pie sliced into too many pieces, making it difficult to make a profit.

1 hour ago, Mark II said:

The issue here is that FSX was created by Aces Studios while nowdays MS seeks ( pls ignore the marketing mantras.. ) for money and brand visibility only, they aim mostly to attract new young gamers and in order to do that the product must be simple, not a simulator with GPS fixes and complicated approach charts which might scare the new comers.

How is it that people keep repeating things like this as if they are facts? You can even see the navigational fixes displayed on the G1000 panels in the actual trailer. That, combined with Microsoft's assurances that this will be a simulator should be enough to assure people that the new Flight Simulator shouldn't be anymore watered down than say, default FSX.

I remember before FSX was released, people feared it would be "arcadey," partly due to its inclusion of missions. No one today would say such a thing about FSX. Many today still use FSX, or some form of it (P3D) 13 years later. So it would only be natural to expect at least the same level of complexity in the new simulator, if not more so. Certainly not a regression, even if they include optional gameplay features simplified for "newcomers," which by the way, I believe too few people give little credit. Many may desire a true to life simulator, even if they may not know it yet.

Edited August 1, 20196 yr by RioPilot

21 hours ago, HughesMDflyer4 said:

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. 

Yeah in my mind this goes to a greater point about “the mass” audience and how we for some reason we tend to see the “gamer” as a problem for the hardcore simmers.

I am an active Civ6 player and in the message boards it’s been brought up more than once that less than 40% of the people who bought the game ever earned the achievement on Steam for completing a game on any difficulty!  That’s crazy right? The majority of people who purchased the title never even finished a game. Less than 2% have earned the achievement for beating the highest difficulty. 

So think about how much money was dumped into the game that benefited those of us who play way too much? Millions! This is what the beautiful scenery and push “b” take off will do. It will put money in the pot that mostly benefits us the ones who take it too far  🙂

2 hours ago, TravelRunner404 said:

I am an active Civ6 player and in the message boards it’s been brought up more than once that less than 40% of the people who bought the game ever earned the achievement on Steam for completing a game on any difficulty!  That’s crazy right?

Is that true?  I've completed many dozens of Civ6 games, I can't imagine someone buying it and not even playing a single game all the way to the end!  O_O

I'll take my shot at speculating. My guess is that MS farmed out the FSX upgrade to a skunkworks developer in France to see if they could create a blockbuster XBox app that utilized both VR, the upcoming new XBox console and cloud based worldwide scenery. It probably took a couple years, but it looks like the idea was a good one. The MS XBox One console has lost out to Sony's PlayStation 4 and they needed a blockbuster title to revive the XBox hardware line. And there might as well be a Windows version too. 

Edited August 2, 20196 yr by jabloomf1230

30 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

And there might as well be a Windows version too. 

Just to be clear they have said it is coming to Windows first and Xbox later on and they’ll figure out how to get it squeezed down into Xbox. 

It really doesn’t seem like it started life focused on Xbox exclusively or even at all.

That's been stated many times, but that probably has more to with the nebulous release date for the next XBox.

On 8/1/2019 at 4:26 AM, skully said:

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.

 

This is what I would like as well. I am already doing Flight Sim, Train Sim, Truck Sim. Farm Sim, Roller Coaster Sim etc etc etc all in separate package. Would be awesome if you could just take that MS Azure as the base for many things and not just a Flight Simulator. I am sure rolling along in a Train in MS Azure would look awesome as well

3 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

This is what I would like as well. I am already doing Flight Sim, Train Sim, Truck Sim. Farm Sim, Roller Coaster Sim etc etc etc all in separate package. Would be awesome if you could just take that MS Azure as the base for many things and not just a Flight Simulator. I am sure rolling along in a Train in MS Azure would look awesome as well

What you ask for has a name,itis not a "sim", it is  "life" 😏

At this point I think MS has started the MSF to create world peace, end world hunger and reverse global warming.

I think

They did a periodic review of all of their IP - flight simulator pinged as a previous halo title that they hadn’t done anything with for a while. Moves to next stage of feasibility  

Meanwhile, in an office not far away some people are thinking about how they can make their AI and cloud tech more appealing and relevant to the biggest entertainment market in existence. 

Either through pure luck, or good organisational systems these two things married up and they started to get into more detailed planning. 

Fast forward a couple of years and, after they’ve finished the latest round of buying a pile of development studios, they do a what have you done for me lately with some of them. A plucky french company says, “look we’ve got really good at making vehicles look very pretty and realistic, is there anything else you could use us for?” “Can you make planes?”, “Yes”, “we’ll be in touch”

fast forward another 18 months or so and we’re at the eve of e3. 

 

Why did MS started up MFS again?  Maybe Mr Bill Gates finally read these petitions:

https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-bring-back-microsoft-flight-simulator-series-reopen-aces-studios

https://www.change.org/p/steve-ballmer-rehire-aces-studios-and-resume-work-on-flight-simulator-11