Microsoft Lays Off Entire Flight Sim Team 162
Dutch Gun writes "Microsoft has just laid off the entire Flight Simulator development team. This continues a long-running trend of terminating or severing relationships with game development studios, such as the Bungie split, FASA, or the closure of Ensemble Studios. While one would presume that core Xbox development is not currently in jeopardy after Microsoft spent up to a billion dollars to pay for Xbox 360 repairs and salvage its reputation with gamers, does this signal a reversal from Microsoft's recent focus on internal game development? And what are its plans for Flight Simulator, a twenty-seven-year product with an extremely loyal user-base and a multitude of externally developed add-ons?"
Somewhat disappointing (Score:5, Funny)
I've been feeling for a while now that Microsoft should probably just drop everything and become solely a games developer (with a possible exception of MS Office, their only real successful product, put that on the Xbox or something).
ATTENTION SHOPPERS! (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Well, they already sold Train Sim (Score:1, Funny)
My God. Riding an actual train is boring enough. People bring books for that. But actually seeking out a simulated bored-on-a-train experience, for your leisure time? Just get a damn book.
There are some of us who pay serious amounts of money to ride behind steam locos or on other unusual or famous trains.
However, I admit comparing the ride on an actual train to the passenger view in MSTS is rather like the difference between actually having sex and hearing your 56 year old spinster health class teacher say, "Some people claim this act is enjoyable."
(Of course, I'm a train-spotter *and* a slashdotter, so what would I know about sex? :-)
Inflight recorder results (Score:5, Funny)
Twenty-seven years? (Score:3, Funny)
I graduated from college in 1978 and moved to Silicon Valley. In a short time, I owned an Apple II, an Advent VideoBeam projection TV, and a copy of Bruce Artwick's original Flight Simulator. With a nominal 64" screen, it seemed as immersive as any commercial flight simulator of that time (even if it was low-res black-and-white wireframe). And when you bought it, you got a second floppy with the source code! I'm saddened to see the franchise end after 30+ years. Yes, I know that they'll probably farm it out, but it's lost its continuity.
Hey, you kids, get off my tarmac!
Re:Who frigging knows? (Score:1, Funny)
The Slashdot Property: for every unpopular technology product, there exists at least one Slashdot member who is a lifelong fan and will vocally complain about it being discontinued.
Re:Who frigging knows? (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft Clippy is the ONLY reason I still keep an XP partition on one of my computers.
If I really need to run Microsoft Office, I do that using CodeWeaver's Crossover Office under Linux.
Microsoft's decision to drop Clippy means that I won't have to even consider Windows 7. I'll just disconnect from my network whenever I want to clip so there is no risk to an abandoned XP partition.
I'm one of those that has bought every copy of Clippy even before Microsoft bought it from Bruce Artwick and SubLogic. I flew it when it was a wire frame grid (that's basically a paperclip, right?) with the profile mountain range to the north. I even wrote a shareware application for it that still can be found in various software repositories on the web. It has evolved into an amazing platform and some enthusiasts have built amazing motion clippypits and even full simulations of jet airliner clippypits.
I also thought every release of Clippy was profitable. For all of Microsoft's other ills, Clippy has been one of the more popular offerings that people preordered, snapped up on release day, etc. there were flawed releases, but Microsoft would release updates that fixed them.
Microsoft Clippy was really a flagship product for them. I don't know what they are thinking. If any of the team read this, I really appreciate all of your fantastic work over the years. You people made stuff.
It really has been an amazing product and extremely useful. I know lots of real clippy enthusiasts that use it to stay sharp and/or used it to make their training more effective. I can count myself among the ones who had a clippy instructor get frustrated that I was clipping more by instruments and less by seat of the pants, doing coordinated procedure turns, holding heading and altitude first time out.
But I wouldn't be surprised if the Linux clippy simulators (X-Clippy and ClippyGear) pick up all the slack. The hard core people will go nuts putting in the hooks for realistic clippypits, added inputs, etc.
It's an end of an era. For me it totally cuts the cord to Redmond, Gates, and Allen.
I'll sure miss updates to Clippy but in a way am kind of relieved that I will never buy another copy of Windows again.
I'm sorry about this.