Microsoft Corp, quite a long before Xbox, had a Flight Simulator program for about three decades used by the pilots and enthusiasts for practicing flying while staying in their living room. On the credit of that program was also the record of the longest-running video-game series given by the Guinness World Record in 2012.
For most of the enthusiastic fans who were in thoughts that Microsoft had left that market, news about the company planning updating its Flight Simulator X application came to the surprise as the company will doing the updates for the first time since 2006. Earlier in last month, Microsoft also said that the consumers will be able to play Flight Simulator X using a subscription service of Xbox Game Pass and that will be happening sometime in 2020.
Rex Game Studios is the firm involved in the development of weather patterns and detailed clouds for flight simulator programs for different companies and its managing partner Reed Stough said that he does not think that anybody related to the flight simulator industry might have any idea of updates by Microsoft in its flight simulator program. Microsoft might hint that but to be honest, he said, he doesn’t believe it.
Flight Simulator itself is a niche product which might not be in a position to impact the performance of a company that is in a habit of generating $30 billion in quarterly revenue. The update, equipped with mapping imagery from the Azure public cloud, could however came up with advanced technology of Microsoft that could also be a step forward towards the CEO Satya Nadella’s strategy of pushing the company towards the subscription products and drawing it away from the practice of packaged software company was traditionally involved in.
Microsoft did not disclose the price of the updated product yet but on website of Flight Simulator, company asked the external developers to contribute towards the updates.