MS halts development on Flight

[KeithP]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/microsoft-halts-further-development-on-free-to-play-flight/

I wasn't huge fan of flight sims but I usually fired up Flight Simulator from time to time and even purchased some high res landscape packs.

Never even looked at Flight. Anyone here use it?

-KeithP

 

[Chiropteran]

Good, finally some evidence that free2play isn't the best model for everything.

 

[mmntech]

It's sad to see such a venerable franchise die such a painful death. Flight Sim is what originally got me in to PC building and modding. Flight was an insult to the simulation community. Nothing more than a spiffed up version of Pilot Wings. One island, a handful of planes, expensive DLC, and no room for third-party add-ons.

Though I must admit Flight Simulator has been dead for some time. FS2004 was the last truly great version. While FSX is an okay sim, it's underlying code is a mess. You have to throw an awful lot of horsepower at it to get decent frame rates. I think that ruined it for a lot of people. FS always required a powerful rig but FSX still chokes on current systems on maximum settings, with stock everything else. That just shouldn't be.

 

[BladeVenom]

Flight was an insult. Another "Fuck You" from Microsoft to PC gamers.

 

[Kalmah]

They tried to go all arcade on Flight which was ridiculous. They removed IFR and disabled 90% of the cockpit. The graphic enhancements are quite pleasing though, especially the cockpit.


If they wanted to keep the same playerbase from previous games they should have kept the same features and added to it, not remove everything! If you want to bring in a younger crowd, add virtual skydiving to the game or something instead of turning this into an arcade game.

I feel like they were out of touch with their target audience on this.

 

[Craig234]

Well, I just got the DLC on sale on Steam, but haven't played yet. Too bad to see they won't be improving it.

 

[shortylickens]

Oh good, for a second I thought I actually paid for this friggen thing and forgot about it. Must have been auto downloaded by Steam or something.

For those who arent quite sure, you need GFWL to access more than the first plane or set of missions. Controls are shit, mission objectives arent clear (and if you just barely pass you can never go back and get all that lost XP), most maneuvers arent properly explained, theres only one song in the whole game, graphics are decent, especially clouds, but nothing else is really stand out. Well, the lighting effects inside your cockpit at dawn & dusk are actually pretty good. But most folks will probably not notice that.

Gonna have to hit Amazon for one of the older Flight Simulator games I think. Shame cuz this had a lot of potential. Well, maybe some. You can only access Hawaii by default and only certain sections. They tell you Alaska is available but again..... GFWL.
Given the poor, almost arcade like controls, I wouldnt pay for this even if it had loads of contents and didnt force GFWL on you.


Well, I think thats the last franchise Microsoft had left to burn. Its clear they arent making any more Freelancer or Mechwarrior games.

 

[shortylickens]

Holy crap, I just looked at the store and realized if you wanna get everything it would cost you hundreds of dollars. Did they actually think people would do that? For a flight sim thats not even a simulator?

 

[HeXen]

Microsoft Studios is always evaluating its portfolio of products to determine what is best for gamers, families, and the company, and this decision was the result of the natural ebb and flow of our portfolio management,"

perhaps i'm reading too much into that.

 

[shortylickens]

perhaps i'm reading too much into that.

Well, obviously they only do it to make money. But my beef is they USED to also make quality products and actually earn their money.

 

[SunnyD]

Good, finally some evidence that free2play isn't the best model for everything.

It isn't F2P that sucked with Flight. It's Flight that sucked with Flight.

Actually, it's people's expectations that sucked with Flight - people expected Flight Simulator X for free, but Flight was never intended to be Flight Simulator X. It was intended to be... like... Pilotwings for PC (or Xbox).

F2P had nothing to do with its craptasticness.

 

[shortylickens]

Well it kinda does cuz even if you were inclined to play the arcade version of Flight Simulator, the world is meh, and the extra stuff is actually really damn expensive. You need to spend a lot of money before you have a playable game. So yeah, the F2P is also a problem in itself.