Microsoft dumps ACES? And with it the future of the FS franchise?

Big, big news… Microsoft just axed their ACES gaming studio… that’s the studio responsible for, among other things, Microsoft Flightsim.

This is big.

While it’s probably a pretty tough pill to swallow for the ACES staffers (being unemployed in a down economy with a kids and mortgage = Not Fun), Flightsim is as old as Microsoft it self, so it’s a bit of a shocker.

So what’s this mean for the FS2Crew faithful?

Not a heck of a lot actually.

We’ll still be developing for FS9 and FSX.

But we’ll be developing for FSX a lot longer than expected by the looks of things.

In a way that’s a good thing, but in a way it’s also a bad thing.

Having a new version of Flightsim to play with helps keep things ‘fresh’ and ‘alive’, and it helps bring new people into the hobby.

Even though Flightsim for me is mainly just a development tool, I still always look forward to future versions of Flightsim to make the day a little more interesting.

We live in interesting times.