Its been on the cards for a while downturn or not. FS series aren't selling like they used to unfortunately. I read an article about how little money they were making from it about a year back, too much piracy and too little interest. A shame because FSX was the best of the lot and pointed towards more improvement to come.
Hopefully the team will join together independantly or maybe even get snapped up byu another studio. who knows what they might be capable of with a different brief and working outside the contstraints of the existing MS engine. Maybe we will see something to folloow up CFS which I loved dearly and have been hoping for a return to for many years.
I was one of those who pirated fs series (as back then it was to expensive compared to other pc and or console games for me).
but for FS-X i decided to give my money to developers and bought FS-X. I do find it sad that they will leave the fs community.
Maybe a bit stupid saying this, but it may have been also their own fault as every time they brought a new fs game, you needed a much more powerful pc to handle all the stuff. It is the same right now with fs-x (good pc and still i have to turn some things here and there down...even with the patches)
Microsoft said:With the economy spiraling further and further into a hole, Microsoft announced yesterday it was laying of 5000 employees. We learned today, though still officially unconfirmed by Microsoft, that the cuts include the disbanding of the ACES Studio team which is responsible for Flight Simulator. It appears as though the venerable flight simulator, which has been around since 1982, is no more.
I wish I had the patience to play FSX
I tend to want to takeoff fly for a bit then land