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MS release new Flight aircraft… exterior.

Microsoft have announced the release of the latest DLC aircraft for Flight and, as most had already guessed from the teaser shots, it’s the Vought F4U Corsair…

…unfortunately, as almost everyone also guessed, once again it’s a “Light” aircraft with an external model only and no cockpit at all, the same as the P-40, P-51D and Zero previously released.

Needless to say, the question is being repeatedly and vocally asked whether Microsoft are listening to their customer base at all – which as the release schedule for the DLC was probably developed months ago equally probably makes what customers are saying right now pretty irrelevant. With this one now out of the way and the next piece of planned DLC being the Alaska expansion, most people seem to be hoping that at least the new scenery pack will come with a “Deluxe” additional aircraft in the same way that the full Hawaii pack came with the Van’s RV.

0 Responses

  1. I am curious to know the statistics of their business model as we speak, either success or failure (i.e: how many are playing and most importantly buying DLC and the rate of new comers etc…)

    But what I see is that MS is using again the idea of spend the minimum on Dev and try to make the max profit… They try to remove everything that can cost them and that can open cans of worms and bring them headache for support etc… They are just throwing some cheap candies hoping to get massive nice and quick customers to buy these candies…

    To me replacing a legend such as MSFS (was), with this quick money making process is a cheap and not so elegant method for the reputation of MS…

    I don’t care what Alaska will be… it will certainly be another no man’s land, no life and landscape that runs smoothly exactly because it has no life and nothing that moves around…

    Booooo

    1. I have to agree, Michel, from a personal perspective. I’d dearly love to know how well the “light” packages are selling compared to the Maule (which is the only full-featured aircraft currently available “standalone”).

      The decisions about what to release when will have been made well before the release of Flight itself, so it is quite probable that they actually weren’t expecting quite the violence and vehemence of the response to these. On every official thread and post I have seen about this, the positives have been massively (63:1 on the thread I just checked) outweighed by the negative posts saying that this isn’t what the customers want.

      People do have to remember two things, though, the first of which is that Microsoft not only have the right to delete negative posts, they have the obligation to remove offensive posts and a lot of what is being posted by angry people is both offensive and, in some cases, falsely accusing MS of “theft” and other criminal offences that they are not committing. I just had to delete a post from here for saying exactly that. I see one, MS are seeing ten, a hundred times that. Is it any surprise that they are closing methods of communication when people are using them to post abuse, rather than constructive feedback?

      Secondly, the “high complexity” simmer that wants a PMDG model or Accu-Sim is not Microsoft’s target audience with this. They said that before release, they are still saying it now, but some people refuse to listen and accept it.

      Flight is not MSFS11. It never will be. I very much doubt, from official statements and releases, that you will ever see airliners and bizjets in Flight, it will remain a GA sim for its entire life. Like I said, I’d love to see figures on how many people actually have and use these “Light” add-ons, though. I, personally, have never seen a single “light” add-on in use by anyone.

  2. Exactly, so the next expansion (after Alaska) will be Antarctica. Surely, the bean counters at MS will allow the extra costs for modelling some penguins 🙂

  3. Darnit, Johan… I want some penguins in FSX now, let alone Flight! I blame you entirely!

    Doesn’t Aerosoft’s Antarctica feature penguin colonies?

    1. Hey, I didn’t even know Aerosoft had an Antarctica scenery – thanks for pointing that out! Just finished watching their promotional video – not a single penguin in sight! How the **** can they forget the most important feature of a whole continent :-O

      But seriously, I agree with you entirely. Flight is not FS11, and most probably never will be.

        1. Aha! There they are! I knew I’d seen them somewhere.

          Thanks Roland.

  5. Hi Ian, indeed the business model of Flight was not a techy sim and I agree with you and I’m aware that they are faithful to this. However, what I see as a poor strategical choice in their dev methods is to release a 2012 game based on 2005 fsx engine lets say and remove all visual animation that creates life and that was a big step forward in terms of eye candy features back then. Usualy games engines are improved and pushed toward more eye candy with today’s technologies. Ms on the opposite, decided to degrade the engine visual features. How can a the average gamer who knows the advancement of games engines today enjoy a civilian flying game with no life on earth or in the skies and waters etc… So to me it sounds like a choice made to avoid hitting the wall of performance as it happened in fsx… they chose to avoid big rework on the engine and indeed avoid big dev costs… Flight is done clearly for money and even if it doesnt need to be like Fsx, at least it should be a game with enough entertainment values for the audience Ms wants to seduce…
    cheers

  6. Yes, it is a money making exercise. MS have complained for years that they don’t see themselves as getting ‘their fair share’ of after-market income for their software in general. This isn’t limited to Flight – it’s a model they are trying to introduce to all their titles.

    I’d also agree with you regarding land and sea traffic, to an extent, but again, the business model of Flight ties it intrinsically to GfWL, which also intrinsically targets it at online use as that is the whole purpose of GfWL, the same as it is XBox Live.

    In an interview a while ago, an MS representative said that they were “pleasantly surprised” (or words to that effect) about the number of people using the system connected to GfWL and with multiplayer activated. That is and has always been the idea; if you want traffic in the skies of Flight, you use multiplayer.

    Personally, again, I think multiplayer in Flight is seriously flawed and is entirely set up around the ‘random matching’ principle that most MMOs use. The problem with this is that Flight isn’t a FPS or similar and its users will want to be more selective about who they fly online with, if they want to use it at all. Either Microsoft’s goalposts for Flight were lower than mine (very hard!) or everyone is flying alone in MP sessions until some random other player finds them and joins in. Neither are very good for the longevity of the title.

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