smalco

Hi,I took a 4 year leave from FS and this is my first post since a long time, but after reading through numerous forums on the future of FS, I wanted to share my thoughts on the matter.FS is a niche within the simulation games community, for the obvious reason, the learning curve is steep and if you're not a hardcore FS fan, the game will rapidly become quite boring for those not addicted to it! That figure won't change, the 1% that flight simulator games represent will remain at that level, so it all comes down to one major question that need to be addressed and answered by the community if we ever want to see a new version of FS, whether it's Microsoft that picks it up again (probably) or whether another company starts developing one from scratch, which I doubt they will :- What are we willing to pay for a new, optimized version of FS with all the improvements requested by the community?Reading through the forums, the typical price tags between $50 and $80 show up. Taking into account that MS developped a new version in average every 2 years, this comes down to an 'investment' of $25 to $40/year! ;-)I wasn't surprised when MS decided do discontinue FSX..., what did surprise me was how they managed to keep the development of FS versions going on for so long at that incredible price tag! Well they could, because it was Microsoft, because it was Bill's little prestige toy. Those days are gone, that's reality.Now think about what you have spent on various addons and hardware upgrades to keep up the framerates? My guess is that it's a little steeper than the average $25 to $40/year (cost of FSX, depending on the country where you bought it)! Then last but not least, take into account the number of hours, days, weeks, month of pleasure the game provided you!So the major question remains. Will our 'niche within a niche' community be willing to spend + $300 on a new versions of FSX? Because that is a realistic minimum price tag we would be looking at, taking into account development costs versus sales potential.Smalco

Fact : Microsoft doesn't care whether FSX will work on you system or not. They know that users will waste their money in upgrading their system through numerous tweaks, graphic cards, mem boosts etc. FS2002 and FS2004 became great products due to the community, MS only provided a tool.If MS would depict the same deceptive information on their OFFICE range as they do on their FS box, since long time they would have received a major claim against them for 'deceptive' marketing.We all know that the sim will only play as a slideshow based on the minimum system requirements indicated by MS. This is true for FSX and was true for most of the previous versions. Nothing new here ...I'm sure FSX will turn out a great sim in a year or two, but only because of the efforts of the community, not those of MS.That's marketing, that's how money is made in this industry, that's how MS makes money. But hey, what do you expect for a piece of software that costs less than a good dinner with your gal? It sure looks like FS is getting as real as it gets, problem is that the community seems more more like living in a fantasy world (reason why I quit posting here a long long time ago).