1 hour ago, ErichB said:

Well Asobo is the developer of MSFS.  As long as Jorg is at MS, nothing will change.

MS has 220,000 employees, so 1000 is actually not significant.

It's possible for losses of staff in other areas, such as QA, support or marketplace to have knock on effects on MSFS without any direct changes to the Asobo or the MS team working with them.

But with no details of what's actually happening here that seems impossible to judge.

Keep in mind though that Microsoft once before dismissed all their entire Flight Simulator staff and canceled production and support of FSX altogether, thereafter granting a license to Lockheed Martin for the development of P3D.   It all comes down to the numbers (fiduciary) in the end, but never say never.   Mounting inflation taking a toll on disposable income, PC hardware shortages caused by a serious deterioration in the already tenuous Sino/US relationship, etc, could all factor in future planning.    

One could at least keep playing FSX, even without Microsoft support, but should MS abandon MSFS2020 at some point, they will surely at the same time take down all of the online servers which MSFS2020 is totally dependent on for scenery.    The game would be completely nonfunctional after that and all software investment individual users made would immediately be rendered useless.  

Worse, the Sun will eventually explode one day, taking the Earth with it in a fiery doom of terror.   Then NONE of us will be playing Flight Simulator again.   Ever.    😞

Edited October 18, 20223 yr by hobart escin

1 hour ago, G-RFRY said:

The industry is gearing up for layoffs MS/AMD/Intel/Nvidia, AMD are cutting back on production of the 7000 Series due to slow sales, And it`s spreading to the AIB partners.

Yes, but the correct term is "slowing" sales.  Sales were escalated during the heigth of the pandemic as people outfitted their systems to work remotely.  Now that crest is subsiding.

MSFS is their showcase for Azure cloud services. They wont do the favour to the competition and prove that Azure solutions suck by stopping MSFS. Azure is their cash cow. They won't damage the perception about it by the slightest.

Therefore the servers will continue to run even long after development might slow down or even be stopped. Azure infrastructure cost are only ground noise in the total cost breakdown for MSFS. Easily made up with whatever revenue the marketplace is throwing off. Ever.

Edited October 18, 20223 yr by mrueedi

MS will never take down the online servers Cloud Gaming is only a small part of the servers, they are growing the service and they see the future as hosting games on very powerful gaming servers you access no need to download.  

From a bean counter standpoint, once that 10 year mark hits that they keep mentioning they will support MSFS to, I can foresee them keeping the servers on and going to a monthly subscription model for access to them. Want to keep enjoying your fabulous flight sim after 10 years? You absolutely can, for a monthly subscription fee. If it’s small enough, say $4.99 a month, they will probably do very well. Most of us would pay $60 a year to keep access, I would.

29 minutes ago, Matchstick said:

It's possible for losses of staff in other areas, such as QA, support or marketplace to have knock on effects on MSFS without any direct changes to the Asobo or the MS team working with them.

But with no details of what's actually happening here that seems impossible to judge.

If there's one area that cannot afford a loss of personnel it's QA with this title 😆

Firstly as many have already said on this thread, given the excellent sales and uptake of MSFS in the flight sim community, the nearly total dominance of 3rd party interest and investment on the platform, and all the free stuff being constantly put out especially so in the upcoming Nov release (I mean, MS paid iniBuilds the big bucks to add a high fidelity bird to the default fleet so that it's free for all of its users), etc etc... Ya that alone is a strong indication that MS won't cut back on MSFS (for sure in the near future), if anything I think we'll continue to see investment pouring in.

All that aside, in the grand scheme of things, MSFS expenses are a drop in the bucket compared to everything else in the company's ledger... Even if MSFS developers are scaled back to whatever lengths some time in the future, given the vast cloud/computing Azure infrastructure that MS runs, keeping a tiny % of that for running MSFS services is not going to be a problem... So absolute worst case I see for the distant future is that MSFS stops being developed and enhanced as feverishly it is being done now, except for the lights being kept on, but servers will never be turned off, unless MS itself goes under 🙂
 

Edited October 18, 20223 yr by lwt1971

Well, for those 1,000, MS as your former employer should look pretty good on your resume in a new job search? 

However, there could be some storm clouds ahead as some economists are predicting a recession in the near future... 

 

I can't see how Microsoft laying off like 0,4% of employees should cause concern with MSFS users.

If you want to keep MSFS alive, buy stuff on the marketplace and don't worry about Redmond.

Without knowing the Microsoft structure and the reasons that led to the lay offs, one could only speculate. That's a hard question to answer without details.

 

Edited October 18, 20223 yr by G550flyer
spelling

10 minutes ago, G550flyer said:

Without knowing the Microsoft structure and the reasons that lead to the lay offs, one could only speculate. That's a hard question to answer without details.

 

Possibly more people telecommuting, so a very slight reduction in support staff and early retirement. Company that size, it's a drop in the bucket.  The sky is not falling. 

22 minutes ago, rka said:

I can't see how Microsoft laying off like 0,4% of employees should cause concern with MSFS users.

If you want to keep MSFS alive, buy stuff on the marketplace and don't worry about Redmond.

Buy from the marketplace whenever possible because those sales directly support this project. 

They're reducing in some areas, and will probably outsource services instead (rent). That's an expected move from a company in the tech business which, as well in other sectors, are having difficult times due to the expected economy recession. Nothing surprising.

Edited October 18, 20223 yr by edpatino

2 hours ago, hobart escin said:

The game would be completely nonfunctional after that and all software investment individual users made would immediately be rendered useless. 

Not really, you can fly MSFS in offline mode. Doesn't look as good as online and there's no live weather, but then again there's the Google Maps mod so as long as that's around you can still stream scenery from there.