August 8th Update - Microsoft is taking over support of FSX again

[rocketlaunch 617]

Microsoft -> FSX, "I am your father". Nooooooooooooooooo, join me in the dark side.

[rocketlaunch 617]

All jokes aside I am completley dumbfounded by this latest announcement from Microsoft. I am not sure what plans they have for FSX and how they relate to the new simulator. All I do know is that these are very exciting times.

[Krakin 5,841]

You'd think for a bunch of people who are into a hobby that has them flying thousands of feet in the air, that some of you would have stronger dispositions lol. No, instead we get a bunch of guys who are quick to panic and continue to show their woeful ignorance of how the gaming industry works.

Let me say this categorically. It is FOOLISH to assume that MS deciding to go back to FSX will have any adverse effects on the development of FS2020.

Remastered games have become very popular over the last decade. We don't even know if MS plan on remastering FSX but what I do know is getting a game remastered is not that hard in most cases.

As I've said before, I don't mind people being disappointed by the content of the update but the what some of you are reading into it is downright annoying. I'm under the impression that most of us in here are grown men and women. Let's act like we are.

Edited August 9, 2019 by Krakin

[HighTowers 1,436]

10 hours ago, vortex681 said:

 

To be fair, I think the 3000+ people using just the Steam version of FSX every day would disagree with you (far more than use DCS): https://steamcharts.com/cmp/314160,223750 - and there are probably significantly more than that using the boxed edition. I'm looking forward to the new sim but FSX is far from dead, in spite of the years of gloomy predictions.

I didnt say FSX is dead.  Its just not mainstream.  Majority of simmers are using P3D XP11 or AF.  Most of the developers have pulled projects from the FSX side.  Its too costly and the little market that is left is not worth developing and selling for.   

Frankly, 32 bit 4gb limit be gone! Dont want to see OOM potential ever again!

[Dominique_K 10,152]

I am wondering whether they truly think that the market has any nostalgia for FSX and is grateful that they took it back ?

If so, they misread us completely. A majority (I think) of FSX users are now at version FS12 with Prepar3D. Others went the XP road. Nostalgia is zero.

If not, they have a wicked sense of humour. You want something new built from the ground up, hey ? What about a lovelier 64-bit FSX ?

The next question is what about the « partnership » (love the word) with LM ? Dissolved too ?

Edited August 9, 2019 by domkle

[G-RFRY 1,729]

The fact is no one knows how many users are using FSX still as some still use the disc version and not the steam version.

[zmak 331]

Haven't brought add ons for more than a year. No point ripping up Cash

It's ironic that the community declared fsx dead and buried only to have Microsoft of all companies picking it up again!

[zmak 331]

6 minutes ago, Flamingpie said:

So they took back control over FSX to make sure it won't be in the way in the future!

That's a bit of a stretch considering the content of today's announcement

[MatthewS 761]

3 minutes ago, zmak said:

Haven't brought add ons for more than a year. No point ripping up Cash

It's ironic that the community declared fsx dead and buried only to have Microsoft of all companies picking it up again!

They are not doing it out of the goodness of their heart, as I understand it they have the rights to use whatever improvements DoveTail made to the sim. Their ultimate motive is to maximise profit of FS2020 by reusing whatever code they can from FSX in FS2020.

[zmak 331]

11 minutes ago, MatthewS said:

They are not doing it out of the goodness of their heart, as I understand it they have the rights to use whatever improvements DoveTail made to the sim. Their ultimate motive is to maximise profit of FS2020 by reusing whatever code they can from FSX in FS2020.

Lot's of speculation, will just have to wait and see

[Dominique_K 10,152]

28 minutes ago, rjfry said:

The fact is no one knows how many users are using FSX still as some still use the disc version and not the steam version.

No one knows but we can have an idea through the sales of addons. OrbX for instance said a couple of times that their new sales were massively from P3D users. We also see other developers who were a bit slow at adapting their catalogue to P3D busy doing it. Other developers  release products only for P3D now.

[AviatorMan 253]

50 minutes ago, Flamingpie said:

Yes, I know, it's a very negative idea. I was mainly surprised to see no one else seemed to have thought about this. And I don't think it will happen.................. but you never can be sure.

I thought about this, too, and I don't think it is necessarily a negative idea. Microsoft is about to introduce what they claim is a revolutionary new flight simulator/game, and I think they wish to "clear the board" as far as Microsoft flight simulation/gaming is concerned. As long as there is a sort of "legacy" Microsoft flight simulator out there, it dilutes the space Microsoft would wish to occupy and has the potential to keep some new customers from coming back to the new Microsoft flight simulator. FSX Steam also I understand retains most of the issues and limitations that the original FSX had, which surely MS does not want the marketplace to be continually reminded of.

Would the same thinking apply to P3D? Evidently not because according to LM's agreement with MS, P3D is an academic/training product not an entertainment product like steam and MSFS2020,

[Wobbie 938]

Actually a good thing, as Microsoft will then have FSX:SE as well as their new Microsoft Flight Simulator.

P3D is actually totally different, as it is based on ESP, In 2009 Lockheed Martin announced that they had negotiated with Microsoft to purchase the intellectual property (including source code) for the Microsoft ESP (Enterprise Simulation Platform) product. Microsoft ESP is the commercial-use version of Flight Simulator X SP2.

So, as P3D BELONGS to LM, there's nothing Microsoft can do!

[jymp 168]

This telling us what they plan to plan to plan for the new sim is ridiculous, folks were expecting screenshots, maybe a video, tell us about features being worked on, but their big announcement is about bringing back a 10 + yr old sim ?, guessing like the above said they want to get control of FSX again to keep it out of the way of the new sim, speculation of course, hopefully they do better with the next update

[Sagoland 22]

All this moaning is because people here have moved on to P3D or X-plane 11. And 3000 daily users for FSX isn't correct. It's 3000 being in the sim at the same time, for the whole day it's much more. And FSX crushes X-plane 11, DCS and Aerofly in daily users on Steam. I think FSX deserves a little more respect.

Edited August 9, 2019 by Sagoland