VATNZ - VATSIM New Zealand

News is coming through about one of the biggest changes to our hobby.

It appears that Microsoft, in its bid to cut 5000 staff, have axed the ACES division.

For those that don't know this division is the producer of our beloved Flight Simulator.

More information can be gained from all the major flight sim sites such as http://www.avsim.com, http://www.simflight.com, http://www.flightsim.com

Although they have been working on FS XI - this may never been released.

FS is the longest running franchise of any game worldwide, initially branded by Microsoft in 1982.

January 23, 2009

Report: Microsoft Makes Big Cuts At Flight Sim Studio

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=21981

This is a very interesting article to read in the future of Microsoft Flight Sim

There are also reports out confirming that development on Train Simulator 2 has been abandoned completely (it was due out in less than six months after nearly three years of development) as a result of the ACES closure.

This is sad news indeed... And especially when you consider that behind MS Office, MSFS was Microsoft's best selling software.

Do Microsoft not realise this!? surely they wouldn't lay the developers off if FS was so successful.
Damn the freakn recession.

So some speculators say (not intentionally 4 S's in a row there) it's all to do with MS trying to move away from the PC gaming market and toward gaming consoles (eg the Xbox). If this turns out to be true, I'll be very annoyed since the Xbox has been one of those things I've always disliked, right since the day MS announced they would be developing it.

To think that the Xbox may ultimately ben responsible for derailing my favourite piece of MS software...

Well I can cancel that new super computer as I still use FS9 and was going to bypass X and change to "Eleven" when it came out....at least we still have software developers willing to support FS9 and X but I guess a few will drop out along the way as the global recession bites...changing times

Well at least look at it more positively the developers of the software that support FS9 and FSX can develop even better product noing that they dont have only a couple of years shelf life till the new version of FS will come out .

Glen

Good point indeed!