Flightsim worked fine for a week but now the game suddenly completely stopped working.

It updated itself, (instead of the game, Windows Store opened and showed some game app updating), and every since the start screen is broken.
You can press a key, but it shows the loading screen for half a second and then brings you back to the "press a key" screen.

Any ideas? I googled some and saw people with the same problem who suggested making sure you're signed in with the Microsoft account, rebooting, running as admin,... none has helped.

My issue with "Press any key to start" was solved when I made sure I had the Xbox Identity Provider. You can get it from the Store. It does not seem to go through a formal install but once I downloaded my startup works. I also earlier had to make sure that the "3" Xbox services were there (since I deleted them long ago).

This might not help, but I had the same problem. Game was working, then one time stuck at the 'Press any key to start' screen.

A reboot solved it for me and the problem hasn't come back.

Good luck.

Is it an app called "Gaming Services"? It has the Xbox logo as icon, it's the one that updated itself right before the problem began. So I kind of feel like the app is causing (or triggered?) the problem.

This "Xbox Identity Provider" did NOT fix the problem, still stuck on Press Any Key to Start.

I ran into a similar problem when I changed my MS password. You have to be logged into MS before MFS will work.

3 hours ago, cantremember said:

Flightsim worked fine for a week but now the game suddenly completely stopped working.

It updated itself, (instead of the game, Windows Store opened and showed some game app updating), and every since the start screen is broken.
You can press a key, but it shows the loading screen for half a second and then brings you back to the "press a key" screen.

Any ideas? I googled some and saw people with the same problem who suggested making sure you're signed in with the Microsoft account, rebooting, running as admin,... none has helped.

https://flightsimulator.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015879160-How-to-troubleshoot-crashes-CTDs-at-the-loading-screen

Not sure if anyone in this thread has sorted the "press any key to continue" and it crashing back to desktop. I've just resolved the issue and can finally begin the download. mine was caused by not having the american English language pack installed. you can install it by pressing windows key> type language and then click language settings when it shows at the top of the list> then Language> then click the + box to add a new language > type english then scroll down to find English (united states) it'll take a short while to install, then once it has boot up the game and it "should" now get past the screen. Apologies if this method doesn't work for you and good luck in trying to fix it but just wanted to let people know how i resolved it. special thanks goes to TwOne97 on reddit for this method

I think everybody knows this already but clicking with mouse on the screen instead of using any keyboard key is far more likely to boot up a reluctant fs2020. I thought I had this bug when I first downloaded and a key press simply would never workl. But a mouse click always did.

I faced this issue once today. It disappeared after sim restart (the sim was in the windowed mode, so I just closed the sim's window). But it's a bit scary, that it may come back 😞 Another bug for Asobo...