MS closes ACES studio...

[MKSheppard]

No more Flight Sim, or Train Sim 2

Idiots. And TS2 was like 3/4ths of the way through development.

[Vendetta]

Whilst it might be sad for people who like sim games, It's not a massive surprise, given that everyone's cutting jobs at the moment. A team that only produces highly specialist products that are doomed never to produce much profit is low hanging fruit for the recession.

[CaptHawkeye]

Under normal circumstances I'd pitch a kind of "on the other hand" argument posing the issues and problems in product quality the developer had become known for over the years. That their loss was a sad passing but may essentially had been a mercy killing of sorts. To prevent the studio from tarnishing its own name further as had been its recent trend.

I can't say any of that for this studio. They killed the Flight Sim studio. The mother fucking flight sim studio. The same bunch of guys that have been making one of the world's most successful simulation games since the EIGHTIES.

At the same time its unsurprising. The simulation genre has been more or less dead for the past 5 years. What's left is little more than a bunch of half brained twats trying to "expand" their audiences by adding "zomg hollywood graphix" thus pissing off their old fanbase and getting nothing new to show for it. Nevermind the hilarious money they pointlessly throw in the garbage with powerless DRM protection. Throw in economic downturn and "bye bye secondary game development team".

Oh well would ya look at that little how-ya-do! It turns out I could get an "on the other hand" eulogy in here today! But not for a studio. No sir, for a genre.

[Starglider]

At the same time its unsurprising. The simulation genre has been more or less dead for the past 5 years.

Which makes commercial sims dead meat for open source. If you stay static for too long, open source will catch up, however many false starts, forks and versions it takes. Flight Gear (or whatever the hot sim is these days, I confess I don't follow the genre very closely) would have eventually surpassed anything Microsoft could profitably produce, probably sooner rather than later.

[Jade Falcon]

Anyone remember Microsofts Space Sim, that was certainly one that wasn't a great success.

[Count Chocula]

MSFS failed on its own merits. Other sims, like X-Plane, kicked its ass in the physics model and realism.

Too bad about it going down, though: the add-ons produced by third parties were kick-ass, in many cases better then FS itself.

[Jade Falcon]

I've even seen quite a few third party copies of Train Sim games, though what they're like, I don't know as I haven't played any of them.

[CaptHawkeye]

At the same time its unsurprising. The simulation genre has been more or less dead for the past 5 years.

Which makes commercial sims dead meat for open source. If you stay static for too long, open source will catch up, however many false starts, forks and versions it takes. Flight Gear (or whatever the hot sim is these days, I confess I don't follow the genre very closely) would have eventually surpassed anything Microsoft could profitably produce, probably sooner rather than later.

This is precisely what i've been banking on since 2000 when developers first started showing waning interest in developing sims. Back in the 90s the simulation genre was strong and popular. It died out when gaming's biggest customers went from 20-30 year old post college dudes to 13 year olds.

Quite frankly, some of the most impressive sims we've ever seen were developed with as minimal resources as possible. Though i'm not saying I want the days of sprites and soap-box ships back.

[Enigma]

MSFS failed on its own merits. Other sims, like X-Plane, kicked its ass in the physics model and realism.

Too bad about it going down, though: the add-ons produced by third parties were kick-ass, in many cases better then FS itself.

I hated X-plane. I bought one a few years ago, played it for a bit, was enjoying the game until I patched it, then suddenly it went from a full game into a demo. When that happened, I uninstalled it and pitched the CD into the trash.

[Stark]

Wow, so you hate a sim because of a patch issue; truly incisive analysis.

What is curious to me is that they closed rather than downsized. The train retard market is small but sim development hardly soaks up a huge budget. I don't really think the sim market is dead rather that sims are so awful (either dumbed down crap or super-niche insane crap) that it's not attractive.

[Enigma]

Wow, so you hate a sim because of a patch issue; truly incisive analysis.

What is curious to me is that they closed rather than downsized. The train retard market is small but sim development hardly soaks up a huge budget. I don't really think the sim market is dead rather that sims are so awful (either dumbed down crap or super-niche insane crap) that it's not attractive.

I just don't want to support a game company that turns a full game that people paid for into time limited shareware. If I wanted to waste money, I'd have paid for Derek(?) Smart's games.

[CaptHawkeye]

I don't really think the sim market is dead rather that sims are so awful (either dumbed down crap or super-niche insane crap) that it's not attractive.

Sim A: More or less an action game. Glaring details missing or totally ignored. Gameplay balanced for sake of maintaining consistency with status quo titles such as Quake, Starcraft, Medal of Honor, etc. Vastly improved graphics come at the cost of development in other areas. Controls clearly designed with consoles in mind, keyboard is ultimately underused or neglected entirely. Adding insult to injury, their is no control config in the options menu. Game is usually easy, allowing for obvious and simplistic abuse of predictable AI routines and game play design.

Reviews: Technical achievement. Game is difficult or genuinely challenging. Good attention to detail but reviewer still complains that it was "excessive". Reviewer complains game doesn't look "as good" as Crysis.

Sim B: Unplayable. Developers had vast drawing board ambitions but ultimately never spent any time learning how to code and program. Frequently CTDs, locks, or experiences catastrophic game play breakdown. Controls are impossible to memorize, with 3 different functions being mapped to the same key. Vehicles and people look like tissue boxes, trees look like copy/pasted green shred maps. Extreme attention to minor details has come at the cost of game play design. Feedback to the player is unclear, and the game seems to ignore the player's input.

Reviews: Never reviewed by mainstream publications, who ignore it. Reader reviews mercilessly peg the game for still failing to take into account placement of banana shaped paint decal on car's bumper.

Or did I just narrow down every genre?

[Starglider]

What is curious to me is that they closed rather than downsized. The train retard market is small but sim development hardly soaks up a huge budget.

It soaks up a budget. Some exec looked at the amount of cash needed to finish, produce and market the next sim game, then the amount of profit that was likely to produce, and came to the conclusion that that money would be better spent on something else (like bribing one more developer to make a 360 exclusive). Or at least that's the theory. Given that this is Microsoft, it's just as likely to be internal politics; maybe whichever exec was previously championing the group got fired and others are hungrily grabbing at the budget and staff.

[Sarevok]

Sim genre may have sins of it's own to blame for it's demise. When I tried IL-2 it felt like a DOS / Win95 era plane sim repackaged with "teh shaderz and hardware T&L" era graphics. The gameplay itself is same shitty exercise in frustation. What would be forgiven or glossed over 15 years back now is painfully obvious. Sims these days just scream bad production values, terrible game mechanics and awful AI. I am not saying dumb sims down. Quite to the contrary sim games need to step forward and actually improve the "simulation" factor. Sim makers can't keep selling dos games repackaged in modern graphics.

[Jade Falcon]

A lot of aircraft games now are dumbed down, like the Blazing Angels series (I love them, but they're not sims), Secret Weapons over Normandy and so on.

Maybe part of the problem is that in the old days you bought a sim from Microprose in a box that could withstand a nuclear blast and got a manual the size of a small encyclopedia to explain everything to you. Now you don't.

[Sarevok]

A lot of aircraft games now are dumbed down, like the Blazing Angels series (I love them, but they're not sims), Secret Weapons over Normandy and so on.

Maybe part of the problem is that in the old days you bought a sim from Microprose in a box that could withstand a nuclear blast and got a manual the size of a small encyclopedia to explain everything to you. Now you don't.

Yes part of the appeal was all the time spent in toilets reading about guided missiles.

One did not notice the fact half the things said in fluff were nowhere near portrayed in the game. T-90s have kontank ERA, shtora jammers and battle management systems the book says ? Nevermind the fact it is just a sprite with 200 hitpoints, all the tacticool juicy bits are still appealing enough to find how out how to start the damn AH-64 engine and actually shoot a missile.

[Julhelm]

Actually, in the old days the sims were usually much simpler and more action/gameplay-oriented than today's sims like LOMAC or DCS-BS that model every single subsystem and switch in a plane. Personally I think if sims were to return to the style of old (F-19) where they'd feature very good graphics and production values combined with good gameplay (Strike Commander) they'd be more popular.

In essence, the problem with sims is that there is a small crowd of hardcore realism nuts that poison the entire well by immediately lambasting and backstabbing any sim efforts that do not meet their own highly niched and ridiculously elevated expectations of what a sim should be. While everyone else figured out long ago that realism for the sake of realism doesn't translate into good gameplay.

Which is why I like the Third Wire series. They're simple sims that are easy enough to pick up. We just need that level of managable realism coupled with production values and storytelling like Ace Combat.

[Jade Falcon]

The Microprose games seemed to reach the decent balance between arcade game and full on sim quite nicely. I remember spending ages on the old F-19 Stealth Fighter bombing hell out of Libya and Iran.

The old WWII game Overlord was pretty nice, it had a sort of campaign, and the subsequent WWI game Dawn Patrol was technically impressive but was basically just a series of user definable skirmishes.