No more than compromises to allow it to run on high-end and low-end PCs.
The Forza racing games sell many millions of copies more than many huge ‘games’ because that’s built a thundering audience over time - MSFS is just starting out on Xbox.
There’s a significant majority of the sim that will work perfectly well on Xbox (I have a HOTAS and pedals myself) and we’re only just starting - more functionality will follow the money.
I fully understand your question and I thought about it too but I think console gaming is getting so advanced it may soon be at the level of decent gaming machines without the need for upgrading every 6 months.
Me personally I was always a console gamer and I made the switch initially for sim racing and I could never go back but what I have noticed is how fast hardware becomes inefficient.
Asobo and especially look at revenue and the reach is far more profitable with the Xbox users. Microsoft and Asobo only really care about profit realistically.
I think we need to embrace it as a community and welcome them im pretty sure they will figure out the balance. We tend to forget this is the through flight sim that has ventured into the console world.
Give it time but I do see your point
Now in my 50’s and aviation nerd also started my simming career on the spectrum. Then brought s pc of flight 96 , Jane’s ww2 fighters and Microsoft combat. Then flight 2004 and to was all set for 2020 on pc. Updated the memory, graphics card and got yoke and rudder pedals but could never get the program to run smoothly. But also have an X mainly for racing games and found to my delight 2020 runs as smooth as silk. Call it a game or sim, I don’t care. It’s great to go VFR-ing round the known world in so much detail. Shovel or Spade they still dig and on the Xbox fewer distractions and more of my friends are getting hooked.
The Top Gun DLC was announced because the movie was announced (again). They are both to be released together
As we can see with WU6, Asobo already tries to make MSFS use the available hardware again. With WU6 the cap on RAM usage has been removed.
If I were a developer and introduced software for a second platform, I would also try to make them work together, by first only concentrating on the weaker platform (XBox). SU5 was a very complex operation and while there were several hickups I actually expected much much worse than actually happened. Since they won’t be introducing another platform any time soon, I also expect the remaining important problems to be solved.
So far I am actually rather content with the way things are going concerning XBox vs PC. The amount of content added for free is unprecedented, new features were introduced and many bugs have been solved. There is still a lot to be done, but as I have said many times, MSFS is a long term project. Didn’t expect it to be perfect from the beginning. XPlane and P3D also took many years to become what they are now.
About the future: 3rd party devs determine the future of flight sims and since XBox only has the marketplace, PC will always be shead there.
And frankly the delay (in both movie and DLC) may usefully give MS/A a little breather.
You are probably right.
Man, you really haven’t seen what a rubbish track record looks like. In fact I have NEVER seen a dev team in over 40 years of gaming and simming more invested in the community than Asobo were.
Have you ever considered that they have just not concentrated on what you find important? Igf anything is clear, then that MSFS biggest selling point was graphics and VFR. And with all the problems concerning draw distance etc. It us vastly superior to anything out there including professional simulators by Airbus and Boeing.
The other side of the coin is that IFR and systems are still lacking compared to XPlane and P3D.
If you expect a sim this complex to be perfected in only 13 months you might want to work on your expectations or be resigned to being unhappy. A flight sim isn’t a shooter where every year a new and better game is released
And if you say XPlane: check back what XPlane 10 was like when it came out. Most people beluttled it and thought it would never remotely be as good as FSX … but it evolved into Xplane 11 and today it probably still is the best alrounder.
I don’t understand the ASOBO position.
Any programmer with any experience/knowledge should be able to
construct a decision tree that says:
If XBOX then Do
else Do
Where “else Do” means PC ( or everything not XBOX)
This could be done in the code and no one would be any wiser.
Thus, none of all of this XBOX vs PC business.
I’m an old timer but that is the way we used to code.
Maybe the new systems are not as simple.
But, I doubt it.
Edit:
Even the FS2020 application on start up on a users device (PC, XBOX).
If XBOX then DO
else DO
Just remember the Captain of this ship is Microsoft.
Heck, they have the best of the best programmers. I hope.
Anyway, It is an ASOBO problem.
But for me the question is with regards the top gun enhancement pack is a big why . Other than its latched onto a movie release about flying.
Msfs isn’t a combat sim or is it going to become just that with this topgun pack . If so what target audience is that appealing to.? Or more importantly what is Microsoft’s long term vision with this title . Is it going to become less sim more game and potentially a combat simulator to boot .since who is going to be content flying a f14 or whatever that cant simulate rocket fire. Sorry I realise that’s another question I ve posed .
Why don’t you start you own Topic?
HUh?
Not that again. 
Ever since the MB339 was published this argument has popped up with every single new military plane. Ok here it goes:
The question is: why not?
Flying is flying and the fact that military planes are, and always have been, hugely popular shows that even without guns and bombs managing to fly a Spitfire or F/A 18 can be rewarding. Hell even FS5 already had an aircraft carrier.
Also I wouldn’t want to spend money and time for another learning curve on two sims. While DCS may be free, the addons aren’t. Also the terrain graphics suck.
Since PC and XBox are supposed to be running on the same servers, so that XBox and PC users can play together, it might not be quite as straight forward as that. In the past I have seen several games where console and PC users were kept separated online even though the games appeared to be identical. We don’t know what technical difficulties might be in the background.
You are correct, it is up to MS and they, apparently, decided to market it as a Flight Simulator Game.
It is working $$$ very well for them.
let MSFS = very_realistic;
let CTD = no;
//See, I’m a programmer. It’s that easy! Microsoft needs to hire me instead of Asobo. /s
That is funny.
I think Microsoft should drop all PC support for MY game so they can focus on making it the best Xbox game ever for MY pleasure alone. The resources wasted on the unappreciative PC crowd is obviously degrading from MY experience (sarcasm).
This is ridiculous - every day a new one of these threads pops up and every day I just hear a bunch of entitlement and whining.
It is the same simulator minus the third party add on support - it’s up to the user on how casual or serious they want to make it.
The larger the install base, the more funding and the better for everyone. You claim to be in it for the long haul, but whine that one title update that coincided with the Xbox release completely ruined the sim for every PC owner. If you actually cared about the product you would want access for as many people as possible instead of trying to hoard it for yourself. How dare anyone other than the PC master race enjoy a flight sim!
I wish the mods would just merge all of these into the PC entitlement bonanza thread.
I’m a console peasant. I have the Hotas One (for all its issues I think it is far and above better than using just the game pad) I use the game pad as an addition to the Hotas and a mouse. I started flying on 27th July and I have been every day ever since. I only get a couple of hours a day to fly die to real life, and I started with vfr point to point flying, then started added my waypoints on the map, now I’ve started using ifr - every airport I’m landing at now I download the plates to get all the relevant information onto my mobile. Just because I have a console does not mean I don’t want to take it serious. This is so much more affordable for me than spending a lot of my hard earned wages on a high end PC, monitor, peripherals etc. This is so much more than “just a game” I find it relaxing and I get lost in my own world when I fly.
PC users come on here everyday and say Xbox users are not worthy of having access to a sim and you are telling me to have a heart?
Well said. The constant whining on these forums by the users who have such unrealistic and entitled opinions is just so tiring. Why don’t they just take their incessant negativity and go away to their sacred XP/PMDG and be in utopia.