Microsoft Flight cancelled now?

[Capt_Flappers]

So now that Flight's dead... I guess we can speak our mind about it without having a thread locked.... heh...

lol

[JSkorna]

1. People are still downloading Flight.

2. People are still purchasing DLC for Flight.

3. People are still enjoying Flight and we are going to continue to host a forum for those users.

4. People are still going to be held to the same posting standards here as they were before the announcement. No, it is not going to become a free-for-all, post whatever you like, attack either side, go off on wild tangents, forum. Therefore, threads still can be, and probably still will be, locked.

[RatRace]

This was not a failure of technology or marketing. This was a failure to listen to what your audience wanted.

Depends on how you define marketing. Quoting Wikipedia, the marketing concept "proposes that in order to satisfy its organizational objectives, an organization should anticipate the needs and wants of consumers and satisfy these more effectively than competitors." What you are suggesting sounds like the perfect marketing failure to me. And I'm still saying that over time Flight intrinsically has everything that is needed to satisfy even the most hardcore simmers, except that for whatever reasons MS decided to bring a crippled version to market. Now I can understand that if your interest goes beyond Bush flying (or arcade games for that matter), Flight in its present incarnation must seem a complete failure. My conviction is that, given time, Flight could have become the worthy successor of Flight Simulator. But all this is a moot point of course. We will never know.

[alaskancrab]

Or the fact is PC gaming is dead , and has been dead for a long time. I can't think of a major studio outside of Blizzard and Valve that actually makes 1st party games anymore and they rely on network connectivity to secure their product. Everything you see as a PC game is made by a third party that has no real ties to the original studio except for a contract to port the software. So saying Flight is a failure is a little exaggerated, everyone knew it was fighting a losing battle in the PC gaming market long before any of you even got your first look at Flight.

[Paxx]

lol
Nothing else can be said.

[aircav1970]

Or the fact is PC gaming is dead , and has been dead for a long time. I can't think of a major studio outside of Blizzard and Valve that actually makes 1st party games anymore and they rely on network connectivity to secure their product. Everything you see as a PC game is made by a third party that has no real ties to the original studio except for a contract to port the software. So saying Flight is a failure is a little exaggerated, everyone knew it was fighting a losing battle in the PC gaming market long before any of you even got your first look at Flight.

You are a pathetic anomaly known as a "FanBoy", Bethseda Software makes an amazing series known as "The Elder Scrolls" that has a huge following and it is mostly available on PC although it is on X-Box and PS3.To say PC gaming is dead is moronic at best.... so as most everybody that reads any of your posts knows,your advice and contributions are just "one-sided rants" with little actual knowledge to anything.

[loki]

Or the fact is PC gaming is dead , and has been dead for a long time.

Yes, it is quite dead. That's why PC game revenue is growing. Makes perfect sense.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/97...rtake-consoles

[dtmicro]

People are mad because "it's about money", it's always going to be about money for a company unless they are openly doing charity. You can't be working for a company and say "let's do this for the good of the people even though it loses money", that may work in movies but it isn't how the real world works. So as much as I regret seeing MS Flight go nowhere and get canned, can't say I really have any personal feelings against a business usually for ending a product, it is what it is... I'm not an MS fan-person, but I just don't care what company makes what, I just like good products, regardless of who makes it.

As far as the marketing strategy, we really don't know if a new improved FSX would have worked either, it would have been much more expensive to develop and opening up third-party development on a new engine would have also been complex. Without the specific numbers, who knows, we certainly don't have the data. I'm sure they studied it and I don't think their goal was to start FLIGHT and leave it as barren as it was, I think the goal was to test the market and then add SIM capabilities later. I am not convinced that any type of SIM would make a lot of money, it is a complex and costly development, but it might. Companies like X-Plane are more lean than a giant like MS and are able to do things usually at a lower cost, yet they are having to sell their products for more money out the gate just to make a profit and keep it going, look how expensive X-Plane is.

The problem with the "new FSX" model is that it would have taken a long-time for third-party developers to develop add-ons for it and even longer for people to be convinced to upgrade to it. Many simmers are slow upgraders because of all the add-ons they've invested in, and I'm sure that came into play in MS's decision, they didn't see a way around it in a marketing study most likely. Long-term a new FSX might be successful, but long-term products are rarer these days, everyone wants to see results now, especially in this economy.

[angels355]

People are mad because "it's about money", it's always going to be about money for a company unless they are openly doing charity. You can't be working for a company and say "let's do this for the good of the people even though it loses money", that may work in movies but it isn't how the real world works. So as much as I regret seeing MS Flight go nowhere and get canned, can't say I really have any personal feelings against a business usually for ending a product, it is what it is... I'm not an MS fan-person, but I just don't care what company makes what, I just like good products, regardless of who makes it.

As far as the marketing strategy, we really don't know if a new improved FSX would have worked either, it would have been much more expensive to develop and opening up third-party development on a new engine would have also been complex. Without the specific numbers, who knows, we certainly don't have the data. I'm sure they studied it and I don't think their goal was to start FLIGHT and leave it as barren as it was, I think the goal was to test the market and then add SIM capabilities later. I am not convinced that any type of SIM would make a lot of money, it is a complex and costly development, but it might. Companies like X-Plane are more lean than a giant like MS and are able to do things usually at a lower cost, yet they are having to sell their products for more money out the gate just to make a profit and keep it going, look how expensive X-Plane is.

The problem with the "new FSX" model is that it would have taken a long-time for third-party developers to develop add-ons for it and even longer for people to be convinced to upgrade to it. Many simmers are slow upgraders because of all the add-ons they've invested in, and I'm sure that came into play in MS's decision, they didn't see a way around it in a marketing study most likely. Long-term a new FSX might be successful, but long-term products are rarer these days, everyone wants to see results now, especially in this economy.

Respectfully, I disagree. I have never heard of a successful marketing plan that involved a deaf ear to the customer base. They could have addressed both goals of mass marketing and satisfying their customer base with a full complete next generation flight simulator, by including an introductory version of FSnext on every Windows computer. For example a small region and one or two planes. If you like it then go to the store and buy the cardboard box with DVD's in it (because we're old fashioned and have money).

Something was really wrong at MS when they threw out FS11 when it was 3/4 or more completed. They needed a professional consultant (like me ) to guide them back to common sense. It's silly to moan about the loss of Flight, when better management could have delivered the same or better quality only in a full FS version with SDK. Flight management are confidence builders, I've only had I think four courses in programming, Fortran, Basic, Basic Plus, and Pascal, plus mathematical modeling on my programmable calculator, however Flight management gives me the confidence where I can truthfully say that I could have done far better in the extreme than the Flight management. I believe I could have delivered a successful product that would have made a profit and made the customer base jump for joy.

Instead, something was wrong at MS. It was a very good thing that the flight simulator community was howling in protest over Flight, that way, somehow over the deafness at MS, I believe they may have understood why Flight was a failure. It would have been a disservice to MS and ourselves if we never said anything. I am no protester, I am a customer that wants a better product, giving feedback to MS has been nearly impossible. Maybe under different circumstances it would have been funny, but not many people are laughing. I think many would say, "How did they screw up so badly after we told them exactly what we (their customers) wanted?" It's appauling how badly they screwed up.

[JSkorna]

This one has out lived it's purpose and is all over the place.