CES news

[angels355]

http://www.cesweb.org/

The CES electronics show is going to start tomorrow. Today Steve Balmer is going to be speaking in advance of the opening. If you hear any news from CES about Flight or Flight Simulator's future or lack thereof, or videos, etc, post them here and let us know.

[angels355]

I hope this link works, it is the Cliffs Notes of Steve Balmer's CES speech. It sounds as if MS is doing extremely well. I see no sign at all of MS having any financial slow down at all. http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/01/09/that-s-a-wrap-microsoft-2012-ces-keynote-recap.aspx

I'm thinking maybe MS doesn't think FS customers are that important any more, and as people have been saying that Flight is more of a console game, I'm thinking that maybe this is the first step to completely repackage the Flight Simulator series into their mainstream of X-Box games. X-Box does outstandingly well, a resounding success, X-Box is the mainstream for MS games and entertainment. In the past FS had a special place among MS poroducts, one of the original software products (purchased from Sublogic I understand), so it had a special place among MS products. Probably especially when BG was in charge. X-Box has become the mainstream of where MS games go, and I think in my opinion, FS is being repackaged to no longer be special, but just another game on X-Box, a distant competitor behind Halo for example. I'm just speculating, what is your opinion?

[angels355]

Humorous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY1fI9Q4eEg

[jomni]

It's been like that since ACES studio was closed down.

[loki]

X-Box does outstandingly well, a resounding success, X-Box is the mainstream for MS games and entertainment.

Only because they had very deep pockets.


Despite the relatively strong sales figures, Microsoft's gaming division was losing money. Through 2005, the Xbox gaming division had lost over $4 billion,[181] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360#cite_note-180) However, Microsoft expected the console to start making money in 2008.[182] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360#cite_note-181) due to a loss leader (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader) market strategy of selling consoles below cost in order to obtain market saturation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_saturation) and gain profits on software and peripherals with a much higher profit margin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_margin).[183] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360#cite_note-182)[184] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360#cite_note-183) Additionally, Microsoft took a charge of $1 billion dollars on its June 2007 Income Statement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_statement) to account for the cost of replacing bricked (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_(electronics)) Xbox 360s.[185] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360#cite_note-184)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360#Reception_and_sales



soon Metro will come to Windows 8 PCs and tablets, too.


Microsoft has been selling tablets for 10+ years now, yet few even knew what a tablet was until Apple, and then Google, started releasing them. Maybe Windows 8 will do better than MS's previous attempts, but we will have to wait and see.



· Xbox 360 is first in console sales with more than 66 million worldwide


Nintendo's Wii has more sales than the 360 with 89 million. Not sure what they are counting here exactly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles



Windows Phone has more than 50,000 published apps and games in Marketplace – with an average of 300 more added each day.


Apple's iOS and Google's Android both have hundreds of thousands of apps. Microsoft was very late to the market with Windows Phone 7, and it still remains to be seen if it will sell well in the long. A rather telling note is that corporations still prefer to use Blackerries for access to corporate MS Exchange email servers, not a Microsoft mobile product. Microsoft also had two failures in the mobile phone market in the old Windows Mobile and more recent Kin products. And then there is the Zune MP3 player which never took off, while Apple's iPod continues to dominate the market.



· Bing has more than doubled market share since launch, and with our partnership with Yahoo, we power nearly 30 percent of the U.S. searches.


And are still behind Google, even after partnering with Yahoo.

Before launching Steam, Valve pitched the idea to Microsoft as it seemed like a good fit for the then new Games for Windows Live initiative. What happened? Microsoft turned them down, and Valve decided to do it on their own. Now they have the largest online PC game distribution platform. Like RIM's Blackberries, this should have been a Microsoft product.

Overall, outside of Windows, Office and Exchange in the corporate market, Microsoft is still playing catch up in the consumer world. And people are beginning to find that they don't necessarily need a Windows machine at home thanks to smartphones, tablets and Macs (Facebook works just fine on almost any platform with an internet connection and web browser, for example). 2012 will be an interesting year for Microsoft, and they need to really start making headway with their new products. In my opinion they need a Gates or Jobs at the top, not Balmer.

[angels355]

It's been like that since ACES studio was closed down.

Difficult to accept the truth.

[angels355]

Thanks loki, stunning analisys. I'm installing Win 8 Dev Preview right now. I was speaking to a non-geek, who is a big fan of the Kardashians. Like, I mean fer sure fer sure! She talked and texted a lot on her phone, said she had an iPad that made her home pc obsolete. She said that after they got the iPad, the pc just gathered dust. She acted as if she could not remember how to turn it on.

Myself, I have P3's through a Q9450 system, but mostly use P4's, an AMD 2800+, and Pentium D. Have 98SE's, Win 2000, and heavily rely on Linux. Linux is a no-brainer to install and use, and a considerable vacation from Windows, and Linux and the way it is organized for work, is an absolute workhorse. Windows would slow me down. Many things however are better performed on a WIndows machine, but for every day work I heavily rely on Linux. I haven't used a cell phone for a long time, don't have an iPad or necessarily want one. Might get a laptop, and a cell phone I seem to be the opposite of the young woman. But she probably represents the mainstream of the market. Neighbor who is a retired senior citizen has an iPad to supplement his home pc, he says it's great.

I would say Steve Jobs, rip, is the most innovative biz person I can think of. BG seems uninterested, if he brings a bottle of mosquitos I'd like to bring a can of DDT... Richard Branson is also very innovative, good at biz.

I would say that ruining the FS franchise was a doubly bad idea.

[jomni]

I would say Steve Jobs, rip, is the most innovative biz person I can think of. BG seems uninterested, if he brings a bottle of mosquitos I'd like to bring a can of DDT... Richard Branson is also very innovative, good at biz.

I would say that ruining the FS franchise was a doubly bad idea.

After all the anti-trust lawsuits that MS got into, MS and Bill Gates became different... less aggressive, less cut-throat, less innovative.

[angels355]

Win 8 beta 64 bit is looking really nice. Like Win 7 but with new and interesting/confusing new graphical interfaces to learn. Similarly as confusing as Linux and Gnome 3, Gnome 3 was easier to figure out however.

[mgh]

Only because they had very deep pockets.

They are even deeper now. Comparing FY2011 with FY2010 Microsoft report


Xbox 360 platform revenue grew $2.7 billion or 48%

http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar11/financial_review/discussion_analysis.html

[ViperPilot2]

I hope this link works, it is the Cliffs Notes of Steve Balmer's CES speech. It sounds as if MS is doing extremely well. I see no sign at all of MS having any financial slow down at all. http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/01/09/that-s-a-wrap-microsoft-2012-ces-keynote-recap.aspx

I'm thinking maybe MS doesn't think FS customers are that important any more, and as people have been saying that Flight is more of a console game, I'm thinking that maybe this is the first step to completely repackage the Flight Simulator series into their mainstream of X-Box games. X-Box does outstandingly well, a resounding success, X-Box is the mainstream for MS games and entertainment. In the past FS had a special place among MS poroducts, one of the original software products (purchased from Sublogic I understand), so it had a special place among MS products. Probably especially when BG was in charge. X-Box has become the mainstream of where MS games go, and I think in my opinion, FS is being repackaged to no longer be special, but just another game on X-Box, a distant competitor behind Halo for example. I'm just speculating, what is your opinion?

When Joshua Howard, the Executive Producer of the Microsoft Flight Team called the previous incarnations of Flight Simulator "obtuse, dense and very hard to get into', that sealed the deal with me.

Microsoft is aiming for the mainstream Gaming market. They want a piece if the WoW and CoD pie, and all they see are XBoxes and consoles in their future. As far as Microsoft is concerned, the days of the dedicated flight simulation are over, and by extension we are all just a part of the statistical figures for a discontinued software program.

Time to see the light; Microsoft has left the traditional FS Community behind for good. Any amount of begging, pleading, complaining or bitching about it won't change the fact that this is the direction that Microsoft wants to go. They won't care if we jump on board or for that matter, don't jump on board. We're an insignificant segment of the Gaming demographic, contrary to what our egos and arrogant attitudes may portray.

It's time to move on. Get back to using FSX, FS 9, X Plane, or whatever combat sim you use. Get back to immersing yourselves in the experience that is Flight Simulation.

One other thing... in my insignificant, humble opinion it would be a very good idea to NOT inundate the PREPAR3D Forum with the same begging, pleading and whining about whether or not PREPAR3D will be released as a Flight Simulation product for the masses. This arrogance and demanding attitude will do nothing but anger and irritate a corporation that has as much clout, if not more, than Microsoft has. the FS community cannot afford to continue acting in this childish way with companies who, at best only have peripheral involvement, if that.

-- Like I said... just an opinion from someone of little stature or note.

[loki]

They are even deeper now. Comparing FY2011 with FY2010 Microsoft report

Which is about the only consumer product they have that is doing well. So far their smartphone and tablet efforts haven't done very well at all.

Headlines like the one below are becoming a little to common. At the very least they should find someone else in MS for their presentations.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/microsoft-ceo-crashes-and-burns-in-final-ces-keynote-20120110-1pt1f.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/ces-microsoft-steve-ballmer_n_1196310.html

[mgh]

Which is about the only consumer product they have that is doing well. So far their smartphone and tablet efforts haven't done very well at all.

Headlines like the one below are becoming a little to common. At the very least they should find someone else in MS for their presentations.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/microsoft-ceo-crashes-and-burns-in-final-ces-keynote-20120110-1pt1f.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/ces-microsoft-steve-ballmer_n_1196310.html

So? We're talking about entertainment and games here. Steve Balmer can stumble over his public speeches as much as he likes as long as he keeps Microsft's profits increasing.

To put the Xbox revenue into perspective, many extra copies of FSX whould have had to be sold last year to earn an extra $2.7 billion? I estimate at least 50 million. Microsoft will follow the money and there isn't much in FS.

[angels355]

I've installed W8 beta, did the updates, installed the nvidia driver, it's all very fancy, but different and there's a real transition period getting used to it. Finally found a clear shut down or restart button by doing ctrl alt delete as you can do in Linux. Restarts take a long time. The desktop photos are beautiful, Vista, W7, W8, are all very slick and polished. They abandoned us FS aficionados, but they still produce DX11 etc, so there's still a future for games on desktops. Who knows, perhaps something good will happen for us, we have to look on the bright side. Still have the previous FS series, and it would be extremely easy to just continue using it for a number of years.

The addon community is very large, and they have a big stake in this industry. Perhaps they will lead us to a solution. It might take years however.

Something that has been mentioned on sports shows and orther tv shows, is the popularity, and realism of auto racing games, F1, Le Mans, etc. It is so realistic that real race drivers use it to familiarize themselves with a race course before the real race. I don't know anything about it, what's the best etc.

But doesn't it sound familiar? Our FS series has been so realistic that real pilots often use it to study up for a real flight. For example Erik Lindberg used MS FS to study the airports in preparation to his flight across the Atlantic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Lindbergh