Abacus

The really huge news is that due to the slowdown in the global economy, Microsoft has started to reduce their staffing level by some 5000 employees. For those of us who are fans and followers of Microsoft Flight Simulator, the upsetting part of this is that the first wave of layoffs affects 1400 employees including the entire ACES Studio excepting six staffers. 

Most of you know that Microsoft’s ACES Studio is responsible for the development and marketing of Microsoft Flight Simulator. As upsetting as this news is to us, it’s infinitely more upsetting to the ACES staff. Over the years, we at Abacus have worked with many of the members of ACES. So we are saddened to see them lose their jobs. Our best wishes now go out to them as they begin their journey to find new employment and thank them all for their contributions to the Flight Simulator community and more specificailly to our ability to build a business making add-ons for their flagship gaming product. Here we can clearly see how the downturn in the world’s business climate often takes a big toll on creativity and dedication.

How the demise of ACES affects the future of Flight Simulator is now the subject to much speculation. So far, Microsoft Public Relations firm Edelman & Associate has only addressed this topic vaguely by saying:“We are committed to the Flight Simulator franchise which has proven to be a successful PC based game for the last 27 years. You should expect us to continue to invest in enabling great LIVE experiences on Windows, including flying games, but we have nothing specific to announce at this time.”

Immediately after the layoffs begin on Friday January 23rd, dozens of forum posts appeared on various Internet sites written by former ACES employees and contractors. These posts confirmed the layoffs and expressed surprise and resignation to the halt in Flight Simulator development. Since then thousands of Flight Simulator enthusiasts have posted messages expressing their disappointment in Microsoft’s decision to shut down ACES Studio.

I can only assume that due to the large base of existing users of Flight Simulator, somewhere down the road there will be a resumption in Flight Simulator development – either as a part of a Microsoft reinvented or from another third-party.

If there is a positive side to all of this, it may be that the with the code temporarily frozen, the computer hardware will now dicatate how well Flight Simulator performs. We know that many Flight Simulator fans have continued to use FS2004 rather than change to FSX with its corresponding increased hardware requirements. 

With no changes to Flight Simulator announced, developers such as ourselves will have a stable base for which to create new add-ons. As users gradually upgrade to more poweful computer systems, they’ll find that they now have the increased CPU power to run FSX. The question remains, will they feel confident enough to also upgrade to FSX with its unknown future? We’ll have to wait and see.

With regards to Flight Simulator, we have little choice but to take a wait and see position.

Again, best wishes to the ACES employees in quickly finding new and creative positions.