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Microsoft To Offer Flight For Free This Spring
hypnosec writes "Microsoft's Flight Simulator series, which was in dormant state until now, will see a re-launch this spring and that too for free. The name of this series will be simply Flight, and players will have free access to the digital sky with this simulator. In other words, it will be available as a free download; however, the user would need to buy additional content to enhance their experience. The content that can be purchased includes aircraft as well as new environments. Microsoft states that the most amazing part of this game is the user can experience some real life locations like Big Island of Hawaii along with 'region-specific weather patterns, foliage, terrain and landmarks.'" [Video demo here.] I'd like to know where the ESRB finds "crude humor" or "mild violence" in there.
And I have to say I'm really impressed with the game. The free model seems great too, especially considering that there has always been a huge market place towards Flight Simulator aircrafts, scenery etc. Maybe they will work out some deals with third party developers too. But as I'm under NDA I wont say too much, but you can sign up for beta here. I suggest you do!
the user would need to buy additional content to enhance their experience. The content that can be purchased includes aircraft as well as new environments
Flap your arms all you want, cowboy, you're not leaving the ground.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...where you bought the game and then picked up community-created addons for free.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Microsoft states that the most amazing part of this game is the user can experience some real life locations like Big Island of Hawaii along with 'region-specific weather patterns, foliage, terrain and landmarks.'
You mean just like Microsoft Flight Simulator?
The only games I play are on XBox360. I might be interested in that game/simulation. If I needed to buy some fancy control devices, so be it. But having my nice big TV and all it would make the flight simulation pretty nice. And doing the the Live networking would be kinda fun too where you could join groups of flyers and such... interacting with them and all.
Not long ago, I saw my brother doing the flight sim thing on his PC. It was impressive enough, but not impressive enough for me to want to buy and set up a Windows PC... game system? Okay. But my stuff is Linux. I'm comfortable there... got some Apple stuff collecting dust but otherwise all Linux. A free game isn't enough to pull me back to Windows at home.
I would say the "Crude Humor" and "Mild Violence" come from the "Enhanced Experience" which probably involves making a pass/grope at the stewardess and spanking unruly passengers back in coach.
Sounds like they are taking a page right out of Zynga's playbook. Offer a game for free, get a user addicted, and then convince that user to spend money on "improve their game experience." I know a few people that have spent quite a bit of money on farmville, mafia wars, etc. with in-app purchases. Way more than anyone would spend to download a full version of a game.
I'd rather pay up front for something and have a complete product (or at least, know how much of that product I'm getting). I'm real aversive to Zynga's model, because there is no way, up front, to know how much you are going to spend to get a good experience playing the game. You just have to keep buying more and more credits as time goes on.
No man is an island, But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie them together, they make a pretty good raft.
They don't exactly give away Railworks, either. It does sometimes get discounted in Steam sales, and if you bought the original, then you got free upgrades to 2 and 3. You do actually have to buy the base game at some point, though.
I suspect this is a special case, driven by the... erm... particular nature of the enthusiast community in question.
More than anything else, it reminds me of the Idolm@ster games (huge in Japan, unreleased in the West), where the home console versions not only require the purchase of a full-priced game, but also have masses and masses of very, very expensive DLC. And yet there is a community out there that keeps lapping it up - even back when the home console versions were 360-exclusive.
As an aside, I did import a copy of the PS3 version of IM@S2, just to see what all the fuss was about. It's cute, well presented and the minigames are fun, but the idea of spending a single penny on DLC for it just seems ludicrous.
It's probably the inflatable auto-pilot and the nun with the baseball bat.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
I've often wondered though. . . yeah, you can make money that way, but for every person who spends hundreds or thousands of dollars on DLC, I bet you have hundreds or thousands of players who never buy anything?
That kind of logic is what's causing problems for the movie and music industries. It doesn't matter how many people are not paying for your product, it matters how many people are. Your job, as a capitalist business, is to maximise the product of the number of people who are paying by the amount that they are paying. The movie industry has spent a huge amount on marketing campaigns to try to get people to stop pirating their products, forgetting that their goal should have been to make people start paying for them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I wonder how this new version will compare to FlightGear ?
http://www.flightgear.org/
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Next up, movie add-ons! You get a copy of the script for free. $5 gets you a copy showing the characters against a greenscreen with no CGI. Another $10 will add in backgrounds. $10 each for household items, guns, explosions and nudity.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
no put meigs field back in as the default airport
You won't be able to take off with the giant X's carved into the runway.
I remember support. It's what we used to have back in the days before public betas of supposedly finished products, where users get to find the bugs and report them on a cheap internet forum.
You mean like X-Plane Pro? It'll cost you $5,000+ in FAA Certified hardware, in addition to the software, to be able to use the simulator to log some actual hours.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
That was a sad day when the default was no longer Meigs. I think that was a throwback from Sublogic days when the developers were based in Champaign-Urbana.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
When Flightgear 2.0.0 was released, it was released with a new system that more-slickly rendered runway lights -- it used a so-called "point sprite approach." However, Flightgear's implementation of point sprites did not accommodate ATI's non-standard spec, so airports were 100%-dark for all those using ATI hardware. Who is at fault -- whether the Flightgear developers or ATI -- doesn't really matter to me. Why? It's fairly rare for other software vendors to ignore a quirk in a very popular piece of hardware -- ie. the runway lights have worked just fine in every MSFS version I have played.
And this went on for months with no word of a fix or a patch from Flightgear. In fact, I'm not sure that it's fixed even today.
They'd never do that - people would too easily realise how empty most movies are without the eye candy of the explosions. Worst case scenario, people might actually start demanding well written stories that aren't full of holes.
No, but they do do the reverse.
You buy the DVD, you get the movie.
Alternatively, you buy the "Directors Cut", you pay $3 more and get it with a couple of extra scenes which were left on the cutting room floor for a good reason and a director's commentary (which it turns out is fantastically boring and you can't bear to watch more than 5 minutes of).
You could buy the "Special Edition" a couple of years later for $8 more. You get the Directors Cut version but the box is in a tin and includes a poster. The tin doesn't quite fit your bookcase and makes it look all untidy next to all the normal DVD cases; the poster you never take out and indeed you're surprised when a friend who's a real movie buff shows you it - you didn't even notice it in the tin.
If you're patient and want something special, you buy the "10th Anniversary Special Edition" ten years after release for $10 more, you get the Directors' Cut, a "Making Of" documentary (where they cobbled together some footage from the original green-screen shots; occasionally these are interesting but as often as not you find the guys who make the movies are excellent behind the camera but terrible in front of it) and version with a different ending. Why was the ending different? Turned out that the original idea that looked great on paper really didn't work when it was filmed and edited, so they had to write another ending. You watch the original ending once, then never again.
...when I can look out the cessna's window and see my actual house when I fly over my block.
Seriously, for all it's technical accuracy, the scenery in MSFS is kind of dull and unrealistic. Sure I can fly around somewhat a somewhat real looking NYC (home) but 9 miles to the west, and my town looks like flat grassland. It gets old fast.
I want to take off from Princeton Airport, head southwest and see Princeton. And then New Brunswick and Cranberry. Not random dirty green flatland.
So yeah, I'll pay for another version of flight sim when (if ever) it will look something like really flying over the landscape. Houses, fields, etc.
Huh?
If you really like flight sims, X-plane is the way to go. They have lots of free 3rd party content. If cheap is what you like, FlightGear is the way to go - open source with tons of add-ons, downloadable scenerey, but the graphics are not as pretty. Both have a linux (and mac?) version of course.
I could crash my plane horrifically into the Sears Tower using MS Flight Simulator 1.0 for Macintosh. My little turbo-prop airplane started out at Meigs Field. Mayor Daley was correct to close that airport, he just did it ham-handedly. Will Microsoft's downloadable content prevent wannabe terrorists from crashing planes into buildings? What if, as in my case, you just suck as a pilot? I never did learn how to land that thing reliably.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.