Microsoft flight sim "Aces studio" axed
 

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...hp?story=21981

BOB may have less competition now

Or go the same way!

MSFS has never been a competition for SoW:BoB, horses for courses. It will be a sad day when M$ axes the FS completely, if it happens. I guess FSX didn't yield the "projected 20% growth of copies sold" or smt like that, or it may have sold "just" 700,000 copies instead over a million for FS2004. Beancounters don't see the bigger picture, and that sucks. I'm not a big fan of FS either, let's just say that "as real as it gets" is a huuuge overstatement. Actually, I think that that is what killed them, if it was as real as it gets they could've attracted hundreds of thousands of real pilots to it as well as the PC wannabes. As it is, it's only wannabes that fly it, real pilots prefer Sturmovik :D.

No talk of things being axed here, we will have the SOW website up soon....... its only a month behind schedule. Maybe we could have some update pics of the website against a nice light blue background. :-)

It's not the economy, stupid!
 

Interesting

I remember how everyone loved the old MSFT CFS2 and the following was huge.

IL2 had no acceptance equal to the CFS2, and all the interest was in CFS2.

MSFT kept dragging their feet and people began to gravitate towards IL2, principally because Oleg kept improving it with FB,etc.

Then MSFT hired some bimbo dev named hatfield. That dude was put in charge of CFS development. Instead of improving the CFS2 he rebuilt it, and what a fiasco. The IL2 had better graphics then and still does than the CFS3 and MSFT pored a hunk of money into developing CFS3.

So it doesn't surprise me MSFT would drop the entire FS series. Afterall, the FSX graphics are supposed to be the top of the line and yet the third party guys are still producing much better graphics.

The real facts about all the layoffs/firings:

Effectively, MSFT is just like all the rest of the American companies dropping their workforce. Do you have any idea how difficult and problematic firing an American worker actually is? I mean it is outrageous difficult firing anyone anymore.
Minorities(racial,religious,sex,handicapped,etc) are extremely difficult to fire. They all seem to go to an attorney, and the attorneys refer them to EEOC for investigation of their grievances. The lawyers let the EEOC find if there is anything wrong before they expend any effort. If the EEOC finds a viable issue in their investigation the employment lawyer takes the employer to court.

It's not just about minorities, it's about any employee that you terminate that isn't happy with termination. You never hear it said but it is a a fact, "The American worker has too many rights and bad attitutude towards his/her employer and his job". It's always about them and us, the suits and the overalls, etc.

So, like all the rest of the companies MSFT is just gleaning out the weeds like everyone else. They are getting rid of anyone they view as difficult or otherwise just not what they want. They can use the economy as an excuse and no one is the wiser. It is very easy to explain to an employee you are firing, that economic conditions are just so bad it has to be done.

I don't totally agree with this. Yes, CFS did have a large following but IL2 also built up a fair-sized following very quickly after its release. The CFS crowd didn't start to move across until two or three years after the launch of IL2, but there were already a lot of people enjoying it. Hyperlobby's connection ability had to be enlarged a couple of times in order to fit in the regular 1000+ of on-line users. and others were using ASE or Direct IP to play regularly. Then add in the 1000s who prefer to play off-line and you start to get the picture of a very popular combat flight sim.

B

I just recall being on Netwings.org, Sim-outhouse.com, simhq.com and there were thousands of posters using CFS2. I recall those sites all had an Il2 forums and you'd see a couple postings per day at most.

The Sim-Outhouse is still going, and believe it or not there is alot more traffic there now on CFS2 board than there is here.

The CFS2 is still so popular there are devs releasing add-ons continuously.

The CFS2 today is lagging in the graphics area, the AI pretty well suck, there is no online game anymore... yet there is huge offline player interest.

If MSFT had just updated the CFS2 instead of trying to reinvent the thing it would be the front runner today. The mission builder for CFS2 is awesome allowing users to build very immersive and exciting mission action.

Oleg, addressed the ONLINE game with the best aircraft and prevented all the cheats of the ZONE. The IL2 ONLINE gaming is still very viable.

The ONLINE game has always been the one strength of IL2. The IL2 mission builder is adequate for Online play, but lousy for Offline play.

I'm not knocking IL2 by any means, and lets face it MSFT is run by too much monkey business to let the right hand know what the left is doing.

Do I long for an improved CFS2?

NOPE, I'm looking forward to the BOB SOW and my expectations are high Oleg will produce the best CFS ever... and like all our addons, more than expected.

What a complete load of horse S&#t!
You clearly dont know what your talking about,Google "PMDG MD-11" or "PMDG 747-400" and you'll see how wrong you are.

I'm really disturbed by these news i love FSX and hate the prospective of
the discontinuation ... i will never forget the excitment when i landed on a sglacier in a Maule M-7-260C ski plane at 7,200 feet MSL !! Excellent stuff!

I think most of the CFS2 on-line crowd were early adopters of the IL-2 series as we found out about the sim thru Teamspeak. Most of the off-line crowd never heard of IL-2 and if they did, who wants to fly on the Russian front anyway. Word of mouth in the on-line community told stories of the smooth immersive on-line experience that gave them insentive to give it a try. Not mention the unpopularity of CFS3.