The end of the Flight Simulator era??

This week Microsoft Studios, the creator of Microsoft Flight, released the fact sheet and also the closed beta for the upcoming new game. MS Flight is the successor to Microsoft’s long running flight simulator series, a franchise dating back 30 years. The MSFS series has over the years developed into a smaller and smaller niche market, and with MS Flight, Microsoft makes an attempt to reach a broader audience. By doing so they also turned their back on their fans and supporters following MSFS for 30 years, and the whole community that over the years arose around the MSFS series.

I can understand that Microsoft wants to reach out to a broader audience to make the game more profitable, but what I do not understand is how they are planning on making money on MS Flight.
They are giving it away for free to anyone that want to try it, planning to take charge for additional content such as, planes, new regions and so on. They have made such a poor product that the people actually willing to pay for extras, the real flight-simmers/ aviation enthusiast rather would use their money on the previous version, or other simulation platforms. And the new users that Microsoft hopes to attract, that thinks planes are cool for the first 15 minutes or so, I can hardly see them paying up for a new livery to blue and white floatplane, or for a new region with the possibility of 4 new ILS/DME approaches..


After reading the initial reports on MS Flight it`s clear that FSX, the previous version, will continue to be the most used simulator for many years to come. The development for FSX will also continue as long as the developers will find it to be profitable, but somewhere along the line this simulator will be out of date, and then we will need to have a proper alternative.

MS Flight does not seem to be that alternative to the serious flight-simmer. This seems to be a game including the islands of Hawaii, and will in no way satisfy the real flight sim enthusiast what so ever. Microsoft’s decision to not allow for 3.party developers also ruined any hope of this growing into the FSX successor we all hoped it would be. It might attract a few new users into the world of flight simulation, but I don`t think it will lead to any significant recruitment to the other platforms.

Many are talking about converting over to Lockheed Martins: Prepar3D, based on the Microsoft ESP, but with a price tag of 499 USD per license, and no chance of marketing as a consumer product, the entry level would be too high for most FSX users. There will a very limited number of people doing this unless the pricing structure of Lockheed Martin changes. Several developers are talking about a transition to Prepar3D, but the customer base needs to be bigger before they can find profit in it.

X-Plane is also an option for many, but it has been around many years already, and those who don’t like it will not convert til it. XP would likely get a wider customer base now that Aerosoft say they will focus on it, but still think XP has a long way to go to take MSFS place.

There are also other alternatives that may take a bigger bite of the market which MSFS once had, but all together they will lead to a more fragmented flight-sim community.
If the developers and community can’t agree on one alternative my fear is that flight simulation as we know it today, with cheap and accessible quality add-ons, both for purchase and freeware will come to an end.


I woud like to rund up by quoting a Norwegian beta tester after his first night testing MS Flight:

"The Flight Simulator era died with the closure of Aces studios, Microsoft proven that with MSFlight"

I just hope he`s wrong....