I myself find it endlessly amusing that the VIOLENCE in games, and American televeision as well, is not usually found to be offensive whereas sexuality is. It's a moral hypocrisy that rational thought cannot resolove. I say American becuase their media and gaming is the primary driving force for this culture IMHO.

it's a mix of mental illness and violent video games:

 

-Sandy Hook Massacre:  Adam Lanza played "Call of Duty" on Xbox before killing his mother and the 20+ kids.

 

-This past summer, an 8yr old boy was playing GTA 4 and his grandmother told him to shut off game so he grabbed his father's gun and killed his grandmother.

 

-Years ago a mother in the USA took away the Xbox game "Halo4" from her son until he finished his schoolwork, so the son decided to kill his mother by shooting her in the head.

 

-Years ago another mother took away "Call of Duty 4" from her child and the boy killed her.

 

GOOGLE ALL THESE, THEY'RE TRUE NEWS REPORTS.

 

They all probably drank milk too.  That doesn't make it a direct cause or correlation to what they did.  99.9% play video games without doing those things.  Mentally ill people do mentally ill things.

They all probably drank milk too.  That doesn't make it a direct cause or correlation to what they did.  99.9% play video games without doing those things.  Mentally ill people do mentally ill things.

Indeed

 

FSX has sold 1 million copies in the USA only. If you take into account FSX's worldwide sales, I wouldn't say that FSX sold poorly.

And how many of those copies were sold during the first two years? My guess is not enough to pay for the cost of developing FSXI (or whatever they were going to call it) which then would take over. If FSX has been profitable in the long run it is only thanks to the fact that further development was scrapped. If you're wondering how EA, just to take an example, can afford to develop and release the same bloody football game year after year it because those games sells many, many, many more copies than what each iteration of MSFS ever did.

Thanks for the video link. Finally there is someone who "gets it..."

FSX has sold 1 million copies in the USA only. If you take into account FSX's worldwide sales, I wouldn't say that FSX sold poorly.

That number has been cited often, yet it only reflects sales for a very short period of time (less than a full year) in a single country. It is quite frankly a completely useless metric. Even though "discontinued," MS continues to sell FSX...

That number has been cited often, yet it only reflects sales for a very short period of time (less than a full year) in a single country. It is quite frankly a completely useless metric. Even though "discontinued," MS continues to sell FSX...

 

That sales number was created in 2009, when Aces was shut down. It's been 4 years since then, and Microsoft Flight brought new players that later switched to FSX.

 

FSX sold enough. All Microsoft wanted is a share from add-ons, and that's why Microsoft Flight was created.

FSX may well have sold enough in the past but that doesn't mean FSXI would have sold enough in the future to justify its development.

The problem was where could have Flightsims gone next back then? Pc's couldn't handel Fsx let alone somthing with better graphics. I've always felt that FSX was ace's attempt to give us a sim for the future. I think they knew that the end of MSFS was near so they built a sim that would last into the future untill some other company decided to pick up the fight sim market. They knew Microsofts interest in making another flight sim was dying. Why else would they have made a game that no system could run at that time or one that allowed so much change that planes like PMDG and scenery like Flytampa could be made?

MSFS was part of a family of Microsoft products. For example. When I first started Flight Sim it was on my Apple IIe, Then I bought an Apple IIc, When Microsoft purchased Sublogic Flight Simulator my next computer was an 80386 PC for which I bought MS Dos, MS Windows 3.1 MS Office and Flight Sim 4. 

 

I have continued to support Microsoft from the 1980's until now by purchasing the latest O/S from them as well as Office and the latest Flight Sim releases.

 

When Microsoft closed Aces my household started buying Apple Computers once again and Microsoft has now become almost non-existent in my household. I only have one machine with Windows 7 that has FSX on it, other then that everything else is now Apple once again.

 

For every sale of FSX was also connected to a sale of Windows and other various Microsoft products, this is partly why they continued to support the franchise for those 28 years.

So, your saying FSX was the driving sale for the Windows OS? ^_^

So, your saying FSX was the driving sale for the Windows OS? ^_^

 

I said it was related. A sale of MSFS also meant a sale of MS-Dos in the beginning, then Windows 3.1 and so on from people who were traditionally Apple customers.

 

Microsoft bought Flight Sim from Sublogic and moved it over to MS-Dos taking a bunch of Apple and Commodore customers with it. I would have remained an Apple customer for the past 30+ years if it wasn't for Microsoft purchasing Flight sim.

 

And yes MSFS led to additional sales of other Microsoft products as well over its past 28 years. So it is not only about how many copies of MSFS has sold as a sale of MSFS also led to other Microsoft purchases over the past 28 years. MSFS was part of a family of products.

 

Being from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia....where the Trailer Park Boys come from, we got a saying... It Doesn't Take Rocket Appliances to Figure That Out....

As has been said a couple of times already in this thread - Joshua Howard didn't help kill FSX. It was well and truly dead long before he arrived on the scene.

 

I think a lot of you guys are looking at the "death" of MSFS in isolation from the rest of the flight sim genre. I remember back in the early 90's just about every major PC game publisher had a heavyweight flight sim in its catalogue. We had MSFS, Sierra Pro Pilot, TRI Fly!, Flight Unlimited, Jane's Combat Simulations (Longbow, F-15, F/A-18, WW2 Fighters), Falcon 4, European Air War, IL-2, Rowan's Flying Corps, MiG Alley and Battle of Britain, EF2000, F-22 ADF and TAW, DiD's Apache Longbow, Hind and F-16, the Graphsim F-18 sims, MSCFS, B-17 The Mighty Eighth, the Flanker series (still with us in the form of DCS). All of these came out in a 5 year period from 1995 through to 2000 (2001 in the case of IL-2). They were showcases both for PC technology and video gaming in general. Then all of a sudden, as if out of the blue, they were gone. With the exception of Ubisoft all the big publishers pulled out of the genre almost overnight.

 

Spiralling development costs, increasing complexity demanded from an increasingly small customer base and the advent of the Playstation era all conspired to put an end to flight sims funded and published by the big names. Looking back nearly a decade and a half later I think it's pretty extraordinary that MSFS managed to weather the storm and last as long as it did.

 

If you look now at the combat flight sim genre you can see it's gone through something of a transformation. The big publishers have now left and the current projects are all run by smaller specialist outfits. They are all digital distribution only, and a few of them (e.g. DCS) are a spin-off from military training platforms. There's a smattering of community developed projects based on source code obtained by enthusiasts (sometimes legally, sometimes not so). I think the civilian flight sim genre is finally being forced to make a move to that model. What I'm especially interested to see is if the current user base can support in the long term the number of payware developers/publishers out there at the moment.

 

One thing I do think is very unfortunate is the number of civilian flight simmers who will not try a combat flight sim because they think it's all about nothing more than mindlessly blowing stuff up. I also think it's sad there are so many combat flight simmers who will not try a civilian type sim because they think it's too boring within nothing to blow up. If we could find a way to bring together the two groups I think we'd actually have a user base that could support meaningful future development of flight sims.

Please ignore my post, the one above it written by a guy who is better informed and a lot smarter than me! :lol:

 

The fact that despicable values in business actually drives profit says a lot more in general about consumers than it does about businesses. Cite GTA5's huge commercial success. That is consumer driven. There is not much hope for the future. The pillars of civilization are crumbling. I stopped caring some time ago but then I have no children and I am heading for 50. Might get another 30 or 40 years if I am luck and hopefully the horrid dark age that is coming holds off until after I am gone. :LMAO:  :Cry:  :crazy:

 

Having said that though, gratuitous sex and violence and the exploitation of women has been around forever.

You cannot change the world and I like T&A as much as the next guy!

MSFS was part of a family of Microsoft products. For example. When I first started Flight Sim it was on my Apple IIe, Then I bought an Apple IIc, When Microsoft purchased Sublogic Flight Simulator my next computer was an 80386 PC for which I bought MS Dos, MS Windows 3.1 MS Office and Flight Sim 4. 

 

I have continued to support Microsoft from the 1980's until now by purchasing the latest O/S from them as well as Office and the latest Flight Sim releases.

 

When Microsoft closed Aces my household started buying Apple Computers once again and Microsoft has now become almost non-existent in my household. I only have one machine with Windows 7 that has FSX on it, other then that everything else is now Apple once again.

 

For every sale of FSX was also connected to a sale of Windows and other various Microsoft products, this is partly why they continued to support the franchise for those 28 years.

 

 

I'm over to Mac as well - personally and professionally. Never was an Apple fan, but I'd rather support Apple than Microsoft at this point. Not that I am under the illusion that it makes a difference to Microsoft, but it makes a difference to me. I've always subscribed to Ghandi's philosophy: Be the change you want to see in the world. I grew up on Commodore - VIC20, 64, 128, Amiga 500, Amiga 2000 - before I bought my first PC to play ATP by subLOGIC and Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer.  

A sale of MSFS also meant a sale of MS-Dos in the beginning

No it didn't. Many users already had MS-DOS installed before they even knew about Flight Simulator.

 

 

And yes MSFS led to additional sales of other Microsoft products as well over its past 28 years.

Which products, and how many, were bought that wouldn't have been bought because of Flight simulator?