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Microsoft Lays Off Entire Flight Sim Team

Posted by Soulskill on from the throttling-back dept.

Dutch Gun writes "Microsoft has just laid off the entire Flight Simulator development team. This continues a long-running trend of terminating or severing relationships with game development studios, such as the Bungie split, FASA, or the closure of Ensemble Studios. While one would presume that core Xbox development is not currently in jeopardy after Microsoft spent up to a billion dollars to pay for Xbox 360 repairs and salvage its reputation with gamers, does this signal a reversal from Microsoft's recent focus on internal game development? And what are its plans for Flight Simulator, a twenty-seven-year product with an extremely loyal user-base and a multitude of externally developed add-ons?"

14 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Who frigging knows? by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Microsoft's "strategy" moves have not seemed to make any sense for years now.

    1. Re:Who frigging knows? by NeverVotedBush · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Microsoft Flight Simulator is the ONLY reason I still keep an XP partition on one of my computers.

      If I really need to run Microsoft Office, I do that using CodeWeaver's Crossover Office under Linux.

      Microsoft's decision to drop Flight Simulator means that I won't have to even consider Windows 7. I'll just disconnect from my network whenever I want to fly so there is no risk to an abandoned XP partition.

      I'm one of those that has bought every copy of Flight Simulator even before Microsoft bought it from Bruce Artwick and SubLogic. I flew it when it was a wire frame grid with the profile mountain range to the north. I even wrote a shareware application for it that still can be found in various software repositories on the web. It has evolved into an amazing platform and some enthusiasts have built amazing motion cockpits and even full simulations of jet airliner cockpits.

      I also thought every release of Flight Simulator was profitable. For all of Microsoft's other ills, Flight Simulator has been one of the more popular offerings that people preordered, snapped up on release day, etc. there were flawed releases, but Microsoft would release updates that fixed them.

      Microsoft Flight Simulator was really a flagship product for them. I don't know what they are thinking. If any of the team read this, I really appreciate all of your fantastic work over the years. You people made magic.

      It really has been an amazing product and extremely useful. I know lots of real pilots that use it to stay sharp and/or used it to make their training more effective. I can count myself among the ones who had a flight instructor get frustrated that I was flying more by instruments and less by seat of the pants, doing coordinated procedure turns, holding heading and altitude first time out.

      But I wouldn't be surprised if the Linux flight simulators (X-Plane and FlightGear) pick up all the slack. The hard core people will go nuts putting in the hooks for realistic cockpits, added inputs, etc.

      It's an end of an era. For me it totally cuts the cord to Redmond, Gates, and Allen.

      I'll sure miss updates to Flight Simulator but in a way am kind of relieved that I will never buy another copy of Windows again.

  2. I prefer X-Plane by SoupIsGoodFood_42 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hopefully they'll spend their spare time contributing to X-Plane -- a much better simulator if actual flight simulation is important to you. I was very disappointed to learn that the helis in MS Flight Sim are actually just fixed-wing aircraft with unrealistically large flaps and other such hacks. X-Plane uses a much more realistic flight physics engine. And since I fly RC helis, I have to say that MS's sim always felt strange, not like a giant RC heli at all.

    1. Re:I prefer X-Plane by quacking+duck · · Score: 4, Informative

      If you're searching Amazon it seems you're only looking for paid or official products, but why? Most X-Plane add-ons are free.

      The biggest X-Plane enthusiast site is x-plane.org, which lists over 2500 aircraft and hundreds of scenery/airport packages.

      X-Plane also runs on Mac and Linux, not just Windows. A stripped-down version even runs on iPhone.

  3. Contract it out by kaos07 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They'll probably contract out the development of the next Flight Sim, if they choose to develop it. Firing the dev team helps their balance sheet in the short term and when they choose to develop it they might lease the license or hire an external company to develop the game.

  4. Somewhat disappointing by Drinking+Bleach · · Score: 4, Funny

    I've been feeling for a while now that Microsoft should probably just drop everything and become solely a games developer (with a possible exception of MS Office, their only real successful product, put that on the Xbox or something).

  5. Google Earth by vuo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Right now Google has a VERY good opportunity to hire and release a Google Earth-based flight simulator.

    1. Re:Google Earth by ps · · Score: 4, Informative

      You mean like this?

      http://earth.google.com/intl/en/userguide/v4/flightsim/index.html

      ps

  6. FS isn't an ordinary "game" by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    FS doesn't really push any game sales. Someone playing FS doesn't necessarily buy any other game, I know a few FS enthusiasts and they're anything but gamers. They're living room pilots. You have people that turned one of their rooms into a cockpit for "total immersion". They don't play any FPS or RTS games, and they certainly don't buy consoles.

    MS might have decided they're not interested in this kind of market. It does not push any sales of any other products of their line. It certainly won't push sales for any consoles, since FS enthusiasts wouldn't be caught dead with a console controller in their hands. And unless they manage to publish a full scale cockpit addon for their console, they certainly won't move from the one they have already. FS might have been a seller for new OSs, when the new FS didn't work out with the earlier model anymore, but the number of dedicated FS customers isn't really a customer base for MS. FS customers also don't really need any of their office products or their server line products.

    So MS might just have decided that this is a dead end, nothing that sells any other products of theirs.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  7. Good memories... by Lord+Lode · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've got nothing but good memories of FS version 5.0, played on a 386 computer. I've seen Flight Simulator X in action recently and it looked fantastic. This is one of the things of MS that are actually good, what a shame to see it go. If they contract FS out, that's not the same...

  8. it was an outsourced product to begin with by darkeye · · Score: 4, Informative

    the MS Flight Simulator was initially the product of subLOGIC, and written by Bruce Artwick. It's just that MS chose to brand and market the product. After a while, they just 'took' the source code, and started to develop it in-house. subLOGIC struggled to release its own versions, but unfortunately they failed. (For this ugly business strategy, I chose not buy MS FS ever.)

    Anyway, they might just chose to outsource again.

    1. Re:it was an outsourced product to begin with by DingerX · · Score: 4, Informative

      They also 'took' Bruce Artwick to develop it for them.

    2. Re:it was an outsourced product to begin with by dfranks · · Score: 5, Informative
      Your version of history is not quite correct. subLOGIC became an out of balance company with around 6 engineers and over 50 people on the "business" side. The two sides of the company were separated by a door, and there was an engineering staff member who (among other responsibilities) was guardian of the door. Bruce Artwick was the president of the engineering side, and Stu Moment was the president of the business side.
      Tensions rose, and one day Stu Moment basically fired the entire engineering department (I never heard what the precipitating event was).
      subLOGIC owned the rights to all products except Mac and PC flight simulator (this was pre-windows as I recall), but Bruce and/or MS owned the rights to MS Flight Simulator on the PC and MAC. Bruce then opened an office a few miles away (the creation of BAO) and since Stu had fired all of us, he hired us.
      subLOGIC tried to take the code base for the Amiga, Atari, MSX, etc etc and form a viable product for the PC with limited market success. BAO produced several versions of Flight Simulator (plus Scenery and Aircraft Designer, Tower Simulator and a few other products) before Microsoft decided to move the development in house (or closer anyway). I was no longer with the company at this point, but my understanding was that they initially did not bring over most of the staff as they issued a "move to Redmond or here is the door" edict. Most of the staff decided to leave, but once MS tried their hand at development several of the key engineers were rehired and allowed to work remotely. At that point, FS source was 100% x86 assembler. While it was a high quality piece of code, it was extreemly complex and required talented developers to work with it.
      I assume the original BAO people eventually left and went on to other projects, I have not heard from any of them in the last 10 years or so.
      So, in summary: MS did not "take" the Flight Simulator source, it never belonged to subLOGIC. I assume that Bruce sold the remaining rights to MS at the breakup of BAO.

      Dean

      I still remember a question from the BAO pre-interview screening test, amazingly enough only 5 candidates (out of a very large number) ever got this right:

      Write a small code fragment (language of your choice) to calculate the internal angle between adjacent sides given the number of sides of a regular polygon. As I recall, scenery and aircraft designed actually had code to do this calculation.

  9. Inflight recorder results by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Altitude is 65530 feet and climbing, 65534, 65535, oh fu-!"