Rumour - Gamasutra - Report: Microsoft Makes Big Cuts At

[ChrisHunt]

You know what it's like Dave - wait ages, go for a wii then have to keep going until funds exhausted. ;-) We did exactly the same, used quite a bit for the first 4 weeks or so now it sits in the corner gathering dust!

Re Microsoft, I see the accountants are well in control then (was it ever thus). If the intention is to simplify what would have been FS11 and develop for console only I would hope that the franchise on the PC could be kept alive, perhaps by an independent studio with a percentage of sales to Microsoft for the continued use of the name etc. Less financial risk to Microsoft and an income if it succeeds. There is now though the opportunity of greater stability in the short to medium term in that the life of both FS9 and certainly FSX is likely to be extended with the result that third party developments for those platforms have a longer selling life. Also - the holy grail for FSX - hardware might finally catch up with what the sim needs, and at a reasonable price, before it's discarded for it's brighter and better looking younger sibling.

What did get me a bit was that those unfortunate enough to lose their jobs were notified by text and for those leaving the same day "this is your last day" was a bit abrupt to say the least. Probably contractors but nonetheless...

As for X-Plane - it is tempting but I think it would need far greater support from third party developers to provide all the missing bits before there was a substantial move away from FS. Also the rate of change of X-Plane does work against it a bit in this regard with no guarantee that add-ons developed for one version will work with the next.

Regards,
Chris

[ChrisHunt]

Just a quick update from my previouse post - there is a very good short article from Tom Allensworth over at Avsim with respect to events at Aces and the future of FS. Ben's point about the XBox gets a good airing as does the possible future of the rendering engine (and the problems with the existing one). However the overall tone is a postive one with the opportunity now to make the most of what we have already got (ableit flawed). My note above about the text message was in error - it was an email, and sent the day before, not on the day of departure. Still not a great way to be told you're out the door though!

Regards,
Chris

[Pielstick]

The sad fact is this represents a general malaise in the PC gaming industry. Go into any branch of Game now and the PC section is dwarfed by the consoles. The truth is there isn't so much money to be made in PC games now, the real money is in consoles.

How many people are going to spend upwards of a grand on a decent gaming PC in order to play the latest games that may or may not work properly with their hardware? Only to find 6 months later their new machine has been overtaken by the latest video card or CPU? Especially when you consider they can get a console for a fraction of the cost and plug it into their existing telly and know with 100% certainty that any game they buy for that console will work properly out of the box, without having to faff around updating video card drivers, DirectX or fiddling around with display settings. Likewise the publishers have become so concerned about piracy in the PC market they have riddled their latest titles with ludicrous DRM and anti-piracy measures that are turning people away from PC games.

You'll also notice today that many titles are developed as cross platform - to be available for Xbox360, PS3 and PC. Who is going to buy the PC version when they know the console version will work fine and have none of the silly DRM that the PC version will have? There are fewer and fewer games now that are exclusive to the PC. The only real hold-outs are strategy games and flight sims. As soon as someone makes a mouse and keyboard for an Xbox or Playstation you can expect to see strategy games start to appear in big numbers on the consoles. Flightsims have been in decline for the last 10 or 11 years now. They are a niche market that requires huge levels of investment for a relatively meagre return.

Combine this with the fact that FSX has been a less than stellar addition to the FS series (let's face it, unless you have a PC that makes NASA jealous and the patience of a saint then FSX is goig to disappoint) then it's no surprise MS have axed it. Why spend all that money and time on FS when it's nothing but a flea on the backside of the number of sales they make of Windows, Office, or Halo?

I know lots or people scoff at consoles, thinking of them as toys for kids... I was one of them. In March 2006 I got really fed up of having to fanny about getting game to work on my PC so I got an Xbox360. There are some really great games available for the consoles now, and it's so much easier to just put the bloody disc in and have the thing *work* straight away without having to mess about with updating drivers, downloading patches, setting up display opions... The only reason I keep a decent gaming PC is for strategy games and flight sims.

[TSR2]

Combine this with the fact that FSX has been a less than stellar addition to the FS series (let's face it, unless you have a PC that makes NASA jealous and the patience of a saint then FSX is goig to disappoint) then it's no surprise MS have axed it.

The closure of Ace's has nowt to do with FSX mate, which, (I've said before and I'll say again) has been their best selling flightsim to date. The reality is that FSX attracted a lot of new simmers, and most of the kids who bought it got a shinny new PC to go with it. If you also consider the Acelleration / SP2 updates, it runs very well now on a modest machine... even Tony's old one!

But if you think about it, FSX out of the box was a much more complete commercial package than any of its predecessors, and their sales increase was largely due to the "Daddy I want one" phenomina, after all, show me a boy of 10/11/12 who wouldn't want to fly an F18 and land it on a carrier, or fly with their mates online in make believe missions. Also sales to same outside the US where noticeably up and that has ben credited to the inclusion of the A320.

When I bought flight sim, I had no idea about downloads or addon sceenery, infact it was several years later when I found DM's stuff will looking for info on the real world ZK on the web. I bought it because it had concorde plastered all over the box, and to be honest, I only played it for about a month because I got board of it.... now, leep forward 6 years, much less likely I'd get board with FSX out of the box... and then a year later there is an addon pack for £20.. thats another birthday or Christmas pressent.

Your spot on that the console stuff "just works" In many ways this has been the Apple mantra... i.e. we have a very limited hardware support, but we are pretty sure it will work. Was speaking to one of my mates recently about the xBox and I was saying it could really use a web browser... and he pointed out the the largest number of complaints / issues on the PS3 and Wii are related to the web browser and how some sites don't work, and some need this version of flash and that version of shockware or whatever other pluggin... so there will be now browser for xBox (not on the 360 anyway)

Intresting discussion though

[DaveB]

I think the problem with FSX was that it WASN'T a more complete commercial package and it's this that put many folk off. Some downloaded the demo and it ran like a dog. For others, the demo ran great so they bought the full sim only to find it then ran like a dog. Then came the service packs! SP1 saw performance gains for some and a degradation for others and the same happened with SP2 though it has to be said, SP2 made the lot work for me. Unfortunately, by this time.. I'd lost all interest :drinkers:

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[TSR2]

Fair point Dave... but you have to remember that the bulk of the new sales were "Little Jonny" and for him it is more complete as he gets boats, pretty good looking default aircraft proper looking sea, missions to go and rescue a guy from oil rigs etc etc. And he probably got a new PC for Christmas to runn it all on!

Remember, thats the only way to get new blood in (new new blood rather than new old blood )

[TobyV]

Go into any branch of Game now and the PC section is dwarfed by the consoles. The truth is there isn't so much money to be made in PC games now, the real money is in consoles.

How many people are going to spend upwards of a grand on a decent gaming PC in order to play the latest games that may or may not work properly with their hardware? Only to find 6 months later their new machine has been overtaken by the latest video card or CPU?

I think this is a very interesting and valid point.

<Yorkshire>When I were a lad</Yorkshire> my friends had things like NESes and Megadrives and then I got a SNES and after that packed up I had already got a PC and saw no further need for consoles. Indeed until things like the Playstation and Xbox came out I thought the concept of a console for gaming was dead. After all, why have one piece of hardware that only does gaming, thats fixed and going out of date from the moment its released, when you could have a PC that did gaming and your wordprocessing too?!

However it looks as if in the long run the arguments have flipped right around. My concern is that something like FS is questionnable as to whether it is a "game". Sure from the perspective of software marketers, it probably is. From the perspective of dedicated users, its as much a "simulation" as the software I use at work to predict how gases will flow around objects and thus is more suited to a PC than to a console.

[TSR2]

I don't think the argument has flipped Toby... more the ecconomics make more sense to flog punters 2+ items than one that they control.

When the next xBox / PS etc come out, after a few years there will be no games for the old model so if you want to keep up you will have to upgrade. A fact that isn't lost on "them".

One of the big delevopment is the past 5 years has been the huge rise in popularity of the flat screen TV, many of which can run at a reasonable 1080p which is comparible to resolution that many folk run on their PC's or laptops, and so many games now look very good on TV's whereas before they were a poor second to the PC. One great indication of this is if you go to Dabs or Scan or such a site, the number of PC monitors is a fraction of what it was even 3 years ago, with a much more limited range too.

[Pielstick]

Actually the likes of MS and Sony don't make money on selling the consoles, they make money on selling the games (which are typically around £10 more expensive than their PC counterparts).

I believe MS actually sells Xbox360 consoles at a loss, the point being to get you to buy one so you will start buying their games at £40 a snap.

When the next xBox / PS etc come out, after a few years there will be no games for the old model so if you want to keep up you will have to upgrade. A fact that isn't lost on "them".

Very good point. Still, if you look at the time period between versions of the PS or Xbox you will see that it's still much more cheaper than keeping your PC up to date with the latest and greatest hardware. The consoles are also backward compatible with games released for older versions too. Another good point is because of the intense competition in the console market MS and Sony are compelled to really push the technology with each new iteration of their consoles too, something that Nvidia and ATI don't really do with their £450 shiny new graphics cards that only yield a 10% improvement over their previous models.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still a PC user at heart, but I think many PC users dismiss consoles out of hand, and there really is a lot to be said for modern consoles and their games.

[SkippyBing]

There's an interesting article here:- http://www.cringely.com/ about the lay-offs in a broader context, essentially MS is making some small alterations to it's business so it looks to Wall Street as if it's doing something to address the shortfall in profits this year. To do that it announced 5000 redundancies over the next two years, essentially by just not hiring quite as many new people, including the 1400 that ACES are part of.
Is this part of a grand plan to abandon FS, PC gaming etc? Harder to say but probably not, however in the short to medium term there's no threat to FSs dominance of the market whereas if they made the cuts at the division responsible for the Zune that'd be tantamount to admitting defeat in that market segment, similarly Office and Windows are the two major profit lines so they wouldn't want to make cuts there at the risk of losing market share.
Basically ACES were easy to cut without any major threat to MS dominance or presence in a market segment, the cut may show MS intended future direction but ESP is probably too good an idea to let die.