Full interview here.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/te...ht_boss_on.html

Staff EDIT: Article repost removed.

I'm so sick of this, hey lets appeal to everyone. Yeah they'll make more money but they're creating an ethos of a shallow, pick up and play mentallity to flight simming. Why couldn't they have progressed with FSX taking it one stage further? they could add all the crap that they are doing with this to an actual flight sim so that when people get a taste for it they can progress within the sim. It seems as though Flight will just be a dead end for casual gamers that pick it up because where will they go when they need depth and true simulation?

And no, fly anywhere into any airport isn't crazy it's aviation and it's what people that bought Flight Simulator wanted. I'm sure Hawaii is gorgeous, but there isn't 'alot to do' in aviation terms. There is in a car, or a micro light or v small GA aircraft. There's a little sight seeing.

Everything is getting so watered down.

Let me put six bazookas on an L-5 like that guy did in WWII and I'm sold.

Otherwise, meh.

Glad the franchise hasn't gone the way of the Dodo, like it appeared it might have a couple years ago.

Looking forward to this!

+1

I agree with you bud. I play a flight sim for the sim aspect and to fly into different airports and to fly different airplanes. I do some sight seeing but I like the ability to load up a airport anywhere and just fly.

I will be honest I was going to stick with FSX but I did some research and decided to go with X plane 10. It helped that the wife let me!

Microsoft will probably lose some hardcore simmers but in the end the massive gain of casual gamers will end up helping Microsoft make more money.

It's kinda sad when you realize you're not in the targeted audience group for what used to be THE PC flightsim anymore.

This is exactly the scenario that will happen and ultimately is really the only thing that MS cares about. I can't say I really blame them though. MS is a multi-billion dollar company so why would they waste their time and resources in making a product that only a relatively small number of consumers will buy when instead they can make something that will potentially attract a much larger group of consumers?

It's just too bad the program can't do both.



The Jedi Master

I very much doubt that the average gamer will find the idea of flying through hoops appealing. Now if MS had come up with "Red Bull Air Racing 2012" or "Air Rescue Squad", then I could see their point, and it would probably even have appealed to part of the flightsimmer crowd.

To be honest, I don't think that there really is a huge market of "casual flight simmers" out there.

There are actually a lot of other flight sims that are less complex than MS FS and X-Plane, many of them are free, some of them can be played on the iPad and NONE of them has garnered a huge slice of the "gaming market".

Let's face it, flying appeals to us but not to a large percentage of the population.

Those who DO like flight simming primarily enjoy it for its realism and immersion and a big part of that immersion is that its NOT a simplification of reality, its an effort to recreate reality with all its complexity.

In short, I feel MS has got the wrong end of the stick and has let go of a bird in the hand in the hopes of catching two illusory birds in the bush.