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I have opened a Facebook Group in support of Microsoft Flight Simulator in general, and its laid-off developers specifically! You may argue that nothing in the world is ‘fair’, but MS closing down Aces and killing one of its all-time cash cows seems like a questionable move.
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I think part of the problem is it never has been a cash cow. All versions of FS have simply been a base upon which enthusiasts build the sim they want with add-ons.
The money’s with the add-ons, which is why I can’t see that side of the industry being hit too badly. After all, a lot of us quite happy to pay more for a single add-on than the base simulator costs!
Cheers,
Mark
They didn’t loose money on it, and they managed to not loose money over it during 25 years in a row. The problem seems to be they wanted MORE and expected to make that with the ESP scheme. Which predictably blew up in their face when comparing it to any of the other ‘volume licensing’ products.
Seems like now more then ever we need Add-On developers and supporting communities to keep FS alive with newer and/or enhanced products till at least a replacement can be found or created.
Personally think this is a real opportunity for a new and improved flight simulation product since X-Plane is to cumbersome and for me and frankly lacks the usability that FSX/FS9 maintained.
That said, the core skill-sets are truly out there now in the FS community for aircraft, scenery/terrain, utilities and mission/flight planning development. Would it not be possible to create the appropriate graphics engine and supporting technology and place into production a newer and more enhanced Flight Simulator? With the appropriate funding of course…
Cash cow? More like pocket money. The games divisions of MS ought to have been closed some time ago, since it is clear that the future of MS lies predominantly in business software and operating systems, preferably using an ongoing subscription system and a live upgrading model. The days of boxed, retail games for personal computers are pretty much gone, as any trip to a retail store will surely demonstrate. 8 years ago you would walk into a Harvey Norman and find massive shelves full of PC games. Now you struggle to find half a bookshelf full of them in even their largest stores.
Apart from that, why feel so sorry for a specific group of redundant people when this thing happens everywhere on a regular basis. I lost my job of 20 years as a programmer and that’s just life. Probably in the time it took to even read that article a huge number of people around the world were made redundant and I would surely bet that the vast majority of them don’t have the skills to easily gain re-employment – something that I doubt would apply to the people on the ACES team.
In closing, it’s about time MS Flight Simulator was knocked on the head. Seriously, it’s a piece of bloated, inefficient, antiquated code that has been pumelled and rehashed year after year in an attempt to keep it “up to date” with modern hardware capabilities. The thing ought to have been scrapped and started afresh years ago.
I can’t believe the outpouring of aympathy here. It’s pathetic. You guys ought to get proper lives and stop thinking that the world revolves around a flying game.
Wow there’s some real BS being spewed out here. First off FS was very profitable over the years and was Microsoft’s biggest entertainment title. The problem came with FSX and the community around it. The bill of goods sold to us (by many of us) was that this community didn’t matter in the dollars scheme of things. When we had the split where many of us stayed with FS9 that spelled the death nail for Flight Simulator and it’s reported profit to the bean counters at Microsoft. I guess now we all have proof this community really mattered in the scheme of things concerning Flight Simulator’s profitability. FSX was a bad piece of software released at the worst possible time. We really needed a solid release to carry the franchise through this stalled market. Now thanks to Aces tactic to embrace the general gaming community we’ve lost the whole thing. Aces would still be around if they had the foresight to not only accurately predict where hardware was going (Dual Cores/Windows Vista) but also updating features outside of just graphics. Many requested an updated engine where as FSX looked very much like a rehash of FS9.
Speaking to the point of ‘stop thinking the world revolves around a flying game’ it’s no more than the fanatic baseball or football fans who waist millions supporting the NFL or NBA. The difference here is over the last 20+ years our hobby has actually produced countless real world pilots. Outside of military background pilots I would say a good 70% of new pilots over the last 20 years have been inspired by this software. Our software has also been embraced by our military (USA) and others around the world. Militarizes from various countries like England and Finland have in some form or fashion used MS’s Flight Simulator to train pilots. I should know being a veteran of our US NAVY’s VAQ-34 squadron and also VFA-94. You can’t say this of many hobbies and/or games on the market. Flight Simulator is a very practical tool that transfers easily into the real world. It’s helped me with my flight training and was used by some of our fighter pilots at NAS Lemoore CA. We flew (and still fly) F/A-18 Hornet’s out of that base. My ship was the USS Lincoln CVN-72. You can’t dismiss Flight Simulator like some mindless 3D shooter like ‘Doom’. It was a very important piece of software in which ESP (based on the FSX engine) would have been the graphics engine for multi-million dollar simulators. Another testimate unfortunately to it’s viability in the real world would have to be 9/11. At the time FS2000 was on the market it was thought to had trained terrorist. FS2k2 was held back because of this until it was realized that the genie was already out the bottle with years of FS being on the market already. You can’t hold back progress because some fools choose to us technology in the wrong way. The same could be said of fire arms…
All this is to say FS was and is very important… I’ve watched it help train military pilots. I’ve had the pleasure of it helping me with my flight training. I’ve watched real world airliner pilots embrace this software and I’ve watch aircraft manufactures preview their aircraft with it (Dreamfleet’s ATR for example). Anyone writing this off as another entertainment title is either new to this hobby and aviation or has been under a rock for the last 20+ years. Flight Simulator is iconic and truly a loss if Microsoft doesn’t wake up and continue what they’ve started. You have to know aviation to truly understand and appreciated this software and what it’s done for over the years. Simulators for years have trained pilots but never have we seen something so accessible to so many for a fraction of the cost. Our community will keep going and one day Microsoft will have to acknowledge Flight Simulator’s viability. Some of you guys here need to get out from under those rocks but if you can’t see something iconic staring you in the face then it’s a lost cause. It’s almost like not being able to understand a nose sitting on your own face…
“Outside of military background pilots I would say a good 70% of new pilots over the last 20 years have been inspired by this software.”
I’ll amend this in saying a good 45% of new real world pilots has been inspired by Flight Simulator in some way over the last 20+ years… I say this because from what I saw in the military and over the years since 1986 (where I’ve been involved), Flight Simulator made allot of kids dreams come true and transcended to their real world careers in later life.
I think Jonathan has been living – or indeed ought to live – on another planet. Your post will most certainly fall on deaf ears in a community dedicated to using, building and yes, living with Flight Simulator. Many of us here have been involved over 30 years with flightsims. Your comments may apply to many other industries and businesses, and I would even go so far as to say that I’d agree with you if we were talking Vista here 😉
But the Flight Simulator franchise has nothing to do with earning MS another few billions of dollars (that are worth shit anyway these days), but much more with keeping alive a program that has helped in shaping the company what it is today and that also has been key in getting so many people into sport-, general and commercial aviation over the past decades.
MS Flight Simulator is an ‘icon’ by any definition and should be treated as such. YMMV.
Francois good way to put it. It is an icon to many of us. Compared to some of the garbage that is out in the video game world these days it is an icon. Any of us that were in Seattle last year met some real good people and had a great time with the ACES crew. It was a great conference in my opinion and especially the way AVSIM and ACES put it on. Flightsim has helped me personally in many times just to get away as a stress relief. It has kept the brain engaged for developing ideas in thinking outside the box for the developers. LETS KEEP IT ALIVE!
Francois, it is true that MS Flight Simulator is an icon and shouldn’t be treated this way, but it is also a sad truth – as Jonathan stated – that somehow the recent versions of MS FS were always “behind the times” as far as CPU and GPU technology were concerned, and this in sharp contrast with the true originator of Flight Simulator, Bruce Artwick, who was far ahead of his time. Because – and this is really beginning to irritate me – contrary to what manny simmers (would like to) believe, FSX isn’t slow because it was built for hardware that doesn’t exist yet, whereas in reality, FSX problems have to do with the fact that is was designed and built for yesterday’s technology!
Jonathan – DeCaff or perhaps anger management maybe a couple of things for you to consider… MSFS has been a strong player in the industry, created by a development team who has historically done wonders. Yes there has been missteps and perhaps some blunders along the way, but for the most part this product has stood out for 25 years. That in itself is a testimony to strong profits.
Many of us come from various walks of life and share the pleasure and experience of flight in many formats using FS. For me its an escape and for others it can be much more… But regardless of the reason surely the hobby and FS legacy deserves recognition and some respect. Who are we or perhaps even better —who you to condemn us and our personal pursuits. Leave out the attacks and provides us a viable debate with respect and actual facts… If not then just leave… Its just that simple.