JBaymore wrote on Mar 20^th, 2012 at 8:38pm:

Ah, but thats the point. Flight Simulator WASNT succesful for MS. Thats the whole basic issue. It existed for a long time for a small segment of the market and as they have said, simply wasnt succesful for them in terms of revenue.
Or not profitable enough to commit to the cost of the development of version 11. thats also a basic rule of buisness, get out of unprofitable lines or change them to make them profitable. They went for the latter. I dont like it any more than you, but I cant deny the business logic behind it. that was my point. this gives the simmer community a new reality. It is one we dont like but now working with and trying to influenze development would seem to be the sensible way forward. Simviation has a positive role to play here. If we dont, they will ignore us.

Cusance wrote on Mar 21^st, 2012 at 7:46am:


I disagree completely.  You are using the wrong yardstick.  I said it was a sucessful product for a specific market segnment.  The FS series was PASSIONATELY loved by that market segment.  Just look at the various forums.  It may have not generated MONEY for Microsoft...... that is NOT the point I was making.  It is that the highly negative and vocal REACTION out of that specific market segment could have been EASILY predicted. An idiot could have predicted that.

That Microsoft is saying thay are getting "blindsided" about this reaction is totally absurd.

best,

...................john

Camel_Moe wrote on Mar 22^nd, 2012 at 3:23am:


Summed it all up there pretty nicely! 

best,

.................john

JBaymore wrote on Mar 21^st, 2012 at 11:09pm:


No, you said: "When you run a business and drop a long-term successful product line that appealed to a specific market segment,....."

that sentence contains two statements : A) the product was long term succesful AND B) it appealed to a specific market segment. You did NOT say:
When you run a business and drop a product that is succesful in a specific market segment...

so I did not interpret your words in that way.

As far as being succesful  is concerned, I surely used the same yardstick as MS ?
how much money is this new version 11 going to make? Who is our market? Is that the market we want to be in? what will the ongoing revenue stream be from this market?
I must assume FS came up short in these key points. it just wasnt succesful enough for MS to continue with Version 11 in its current FS format. That FS has a dedicated niche market following has been acknowledged.  Where I think MS failed was in not making it very clear from the start that this Flight product would not appeal to simmers. They tried to have their cake and eat it. didnt work. PR cock-up rather than a product failure I think. As it stands, flight is a perfectly pleasant good working game. It isnt a simulator but I fully expect that one day there will be add-ons, which can turn it into a simulator.

alrot wrote on Mar 22^nd, 2012 at 12:09pm:


EXACTLY what I was thinking Alrot. 

best,

...................john

Guys it's good to have different viewpoints here ... think what it would be like if everyone had the same views ...... It would be like a big biased club ...

& Cusance isn't flying the flag for MS Flight ... he's merely putting across what is possibly their attitude to this whole thing ........

You're all basically saying the same thing anyway ... that MS would appear to have misjudged the reaction from the existing FS users .... BUT -- I don't think they really care too much as long as they get a big enough 'new market' to make it all worthwhile $$$$$wise.


On a side note -- my idea of a good business is not so much about exploiting a position of power, especially an effective monopoly, to make money -- but it's about satisfying customers so much that they CHOOSE you and your products over the competition.

JBaymore wrote on Mar 22^nd, 2012 at 1:47pm:

Oh for heavens sake 
i am in the UK and dont or have I ever worked for MS. more than that i have had some near legal battles with them a few years ago. But all I read lately are fairly unproductive, self serving remarks. MS is a commercial company and like all large commercial companies they will in the end row their own canoe there where they want to go. Oil companies, banks etc they all do it. So suck it up.  Touch, but there it is. So dont confuse what you think of MS with what they have produced, which is flight. for anyone who has never thought about 'flying' it aint that bad and its free. MS is not a charitable institution. Thats is all I am saying. Yes its touch they dropped FS but they have done it. end off. Flight isnt bad as far as it goes. It isnt what the simmer world wants but hey, so what? there is plenty of mileage left in FS. So I wish MS all the best and hope that they get on with expanding flight as quickly as possible so that eventually it may be worth spending money on. in the mean time lets keep it polite and constructive shall we? And please remember this is a forum and therefore the written word is what anyone can judge your opinion by. So dont blame me if people write posts the meaning of which are ambiguous.

alrot wrote on Mar 22^nd, 2012 at 12:09pm:



Lol, probably the worst ever place for a typo, but stiil about 100 cents more than i'm willing to pay for a P-51, minus the cockpit. I still can't figure out why they did that at all.

Seriously though, while I can understand people having high hopes for the future, it's a very valid point. Why anyone would be motivated to spend large dollar amounts to get a more sim like experience is beyond me, and I don't see MS trying too hard to acomplish that.
As soon as you start to move from game to sim, your starting to compete with other existing sim products, ironically including FSX.
There is a very small grey area between sim and game, where it's still mostly a game, and can be sold as such, to gamers, but in order to make simmers happy enough to make it worth going after that segment, MS would have to provide much more than the grey area allows.
At that point they would basically be selling FS11, with a game strapped on, and a paid DLC model that would indeed make the package cost outwiegh the gain for most simmers.
Sure, simmers buy payware, and investments can run into the thousands for FSX, or X-plane, but that's in addition to a relatively cheap base program with much more depth to begin with. It's voluntary, and not required to make for a very full, very flexible experience right out of the box.
Under the current DLC model, to make Flight anything like what most of the "cross our fingers and hope for the future" crowd seem to be waiting for would simply lead many simmers to do the math and go with another product anyway, and therefore it's not really worth it for MS to try in the first place.
I don't pretend to know where MS IS going with Flight, but I'm not sure they do either. They really don't seem to have prepared for the reaction they got, and I have the feeling that even though there has been some positive reaction, they haven't gotten near the level of positive reaction they were looking for either. I do suspect that future focus will remain mostly on the gamer however.