microsoft-railroad-simulator posts

On Thursday Microsoft announced plans to cut up to 5,000 positions in the next 18 months, with 1,400 people cut that day. Now Gamasutra reports that the company's ACES Studio, best known for their work on the long running Flight Simulator PC game series, has been hit with job reductions. The story claims through unnamed sources that the entire Flight Simulator team may have been shut down entirely.

If true this could signal an end to the game series which began way back in 1982 and remains the oldest PC game franchise to have continued regular releases. The last game in the franchise was released in 2006 with an expansion in 2007 The ACES team was also working on a new Microsoft Rail Simulator game. There's no official word if that project has been canceled because of the job cuts.

Meanwhile our sister site Joystiq reports that at least two members of the Microsoft Gamerscore blog team have also been let go. The Gamerscore blog site was the company's community source for news about their PC and Xbox game plans. However a few days ago it was announced that the blog site was closing down and it now appears that the site's team, rather than just moving to other Microsoft duties, will now be let go entirely.