Microsoft Flight Simulator series to continue?

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Microsoft Flight Simulator series to continue?

Posted Jan 23rd 2009 8:00PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Biz, Simulation

Microsoft's layoffs this week affected their PC gaming development business heavily with the company now confirming that their internal ACES Studio, home of the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, had been shut down. However, IGN reports that Microsoft may not be closing the doors on the Flight Sim series.

According to a Microsoft spokesperson, "We are committed to the Flight Simulator franchise which has proven to be a successful PC based game for the last 27 years. You should expect us to continue to invest in enabling great LIVE experiences on Windows, including flying games, but we have nothing specific to announce at this time." Microsoft has said much the same thing about the Age of Empires franchise, saying they plan to release new games in the RTS series despite the closure of its dev team at Ensemble Studios.

Tags: aces-studio, microsoft, microsoft-flight-simulator

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

I love these games!! I sure hope they get shutdownPosted at 11:32PM on Jan 23rd 2009 by Game_playa

Committed? Remember...MS has been telling how "committed" they are to PCgaming for the last few years, during which they have either switched their IPs and devs to consoles or if they couldn;t do it, they closed down or shut down every of them, essentialy completely wiping out their own PCgaming division. If they are as "committed" to Flight Simulator as they were to PCgaming, then FS fans have a lot to fear I'm afraidPosted at 6:39AM on Jan 24th 2009 by AdrianWerner

High ranking CEO's are not always noted because of their cleverness, much about their position has to do with Imago and a big mouth. In the Western world people are getting older (fact) and it is the older male that "plays"Flight Simulator (fact) Thus, killing a simulation like Flight Simulator is killing the posibility of much more profit in the coming years. However, for the flightsim community, the ignorance of the MS leadership could also be a bliss, as some specialised 3rd parties may well be a good heir for the FS legacy, unbound by ties to bad functioning OSses like Vista. If MS wants to bet on another system like Xbox let them do so. MSFS is without any real opponent, Xbox is. I guess somehow "our"game will survie because the FS community is strong and big with a lot of people clever enough to take over business.Posted at 10:06AM on Jan 24th 2009 by Joost Visser