For a cheeky response:
I hope to have this job for a long time. 
Fun reading through this thread though! I hope many years to come with plenty of updates!
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They ARE getting paid. More than they expected many times over.
This is all true (that Aces was let go and many other games were left to languish and then cancelled), and all that happened soon after Paul Allen and Bill Gates retired and management changed (Paul Allen was a huge proponent of the product). Then Microsoft went downhill from there, and new management came in again who realized the value of FS both in the splash it makes in the marketplace (giving Microsoft a good name again), as well as, in how, by structuring the product to be use Azure, cloud services, MeteoBlue, Black Shark and many other core technologies that can be used by enterprise customers for other products, it would be an excellent sales tool as a proof of concept. Given how successful the product is, it’s performing beyond their dreams as a revenue generator and as proof they can get the job done. Xbox was key as well for maintaining a revenue stream for the product as well. Which means it gets justified on many levels.
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Two words. Minecraft & Gamepass.
This sim isnt going anywhere anytime soon.
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Until the marketplace makes them enough money to invest back into the sim, so hopefully for everyone a very long time
Without reading through all post I’d go down the road and just write down my point of view
On software nowadays it’s not that important to provide all new reincarnations of something already created - instead focus is on cross selling and in app purchases.
It’s not just on the gaming sector but also on office and other sectors - usually professional software gets long time support down the road and I can imagine that’s also what happens with MSFS as being some prestige project and a cloud computing demonstrator too
Some people might see the sim as “just” a simulation, but when thinking outside of this box: what if MS intends to transform this into a platform over the years coming? It could be used to improve techniques for Bing Maps and AI generated photogrammetry/cities, it can be used to create a more detailed weather forecast model which can be used on other services, it could also be used for flight and military training whenever the simulation is accurate enough to get certified by the FAA or the digital world can just be used for other Xbox Game titles like “Forza Global”
So yes, it will receive updates and improvements for a long time imho. It looks like for now more and more people come in and enjoy what we already have (otherwise servers would run better on weekends ), cross selling also seems to just work which surely will take an even bigger part down the road (third party aircraft sold through the Market Place as Local Legends/Famous Flyers). Also there likely will DLCs drop (maybe even a “CFS” module? ) as “Reno” was just the start.
Other games and sims are also running for a really long time and get regular updates, take DCS, The Sims 4, Cities Skylines, Elite Dangerous or GTA Online into account - they all somehow work in the same way as MSFS from a marketing perspective to me: bring new content/DLCs, acquire new players and sell new content to provide long term support
Heck, even Skyrim won’t die even if it’s just the refresh of the refresh of the refresh…
So, nobody exactly knows what the future brings but as MSFS now survived year two and has a good filled roadmap for next year future for now looks bright to me 
It was that out of the box. The use of cloud storage, Azure, integration with MeteoBlue and Blackshark AI, Bing maps GIS technology and I’m sure many others makes it a perfect marketing tool.
It already is. If you’ve ever used any of the the “professional” desktop flight simulators, MSFS is miles ahead in accuracy and usability and immersion. But I give it a 1% chance they’ll get it “certified”. It’s not their market, and… why?
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What version are you referring? Do you have a link?
IMHO, he wasn’t referring to a particular version, but making a broad general statement.
Depending on what your native language is, things like articles and verb tense in English can be very confusing.
For example, this can be re-written as:
“A new MSFS version would be payware when major features are added that would require additional revenue. . . .”
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MSFS provide so many contents ,i myself cant even do all of them,maybe just 1/3 of them now. Anyone did all the aircraft and missions or challenges so far ?
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Thank you Jummivana, Jorg, Seedy. Forder and everyone at Microsoft/Asobo for all your hard work its been an amazing adventure so far
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This has been an interesting topic to read. I’ll avoid repeating many comments posted before, so will summarize those I agree with:
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FS2020 is, in many ways, what Microsoft ESP was planned to become - an earth simulation platform.
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I’d be surprised if other MS games using the same core technologies did not appear in the next few years. Not only possibly other sims (Train, Ship, Racing, etc) but adventure & exploration games too. These probably would be developed in partnerships with other companies, Microsoft being responsible for providing the “data” components, and the third-party the “game” components of the game.
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Asset creation, especially the current time-consuming process of aircraft / building / living-world model creation will become simpler & faster with newer technologies now appearing on the market. This makes non-“traditional” uses of the core technologies increasingly possible.
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Thus, the core technologies will be used for non-flight, non-game products, targeted at fortune 500 companies that will spend big bucks on systems that can show ROI (return on investment).
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Our use of FS2020 is creating a huge amount of data on how best to build a globally distributed information system that simultaneously streams real-life data to thousands (perhaps 10s of thousands) of individual devices.
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As network technology improves (5G & beyond) & expands into new geographical areas, many of the current limitations & problems will end. I’ll predict, at some point, an end to caching of any data - it will become irrelevant as network systems reach multi-gigabyte, low latency five-nines (99.999 %) availability. It will take while, but probably not as long as the 40-years to get from dial-up modems speeds to today’s multi-GB availability.
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FS2020, like ESP before it, has huge potential, but only as long as it has the support of key top executives within Microsoft. Lose their support, and, like ESP, it could disappear overnight.
{Edit, ok, lockheed martin picked up ESP, but you get my point}
Jon
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I wonder if much of the development me in MSFS are transferable into other products/sims/games.
I can’t believe that MSFS is the only product that can make use of this real world type of simulation.
I’m loving it!
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Exaclty.
They are building a world model which can be used for multiple product revenue streams in the future.
Our FS2020 is merely one application which utilised that world model.
They will be selling this model to many different arenas in future which have nothing to do with flight simming.
Flight simming is simply a neat way of part financing this development.
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@FocusedAlloy754 : Well, Microsoft Train Simulator 2 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 11 both were using the same Microsoft ESP core technologies. Both products got cancelled when the ACES studio was closed.
In the sim category, racing is another obvious possibility. Imagine recreating Silverstone from the 1960’s, or Formula 1 racing in one of today’s major cities. But you could also recreate rally-type races, or even the Paris-to-Dakar route!
But why stop there - why not adventure based along the Amazon river? or - if a future update included bathometric data - an exploration of the Great Barrier Reef of the coast of Queensland, Australia?
Just imagine…
Jon
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I can picture an epic adventure/puzzle game, definitely. With planes to get around haha (in time lapse cut scenes, a la Indians Jones …travel around the world to investigate and solve the mystery).
I don’t see a race track or even rally course (anything in that scale really) being able to be done better than they do in the dedicated race sims/games. Where they laser scan the road etc nowadays to get every measurement, angle and bumps/ridges exactly perfect. It’s never going to have that detail in the FS globe?
Even the latest Dirt Rally, even though arcadey, looks fantastic and very believable detailed locations with some awesome surface detail and trackside modelling. Lighting is great too and it runs at a fair lick.
We need to think of bigger scale that more naturally matches the scope of the world we have.
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You guys seem to be overlooking the MASSIVE difference between any other game ever released, with their tiny limited areas of play, and the MS/Asobo effort, which is modelling the entire world and weather.
Doesn’t even compare. This is why it will be used for many more things than FS2020.
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If I recall correctly, MS TrainSim 2 (see also Wikipedia) had resolution down to the centimeters level, as you needed that to prevent problems with malformed vector tracks (tracks needed to be “smooth” both vertically & horizontally). You don’t need that everywhere, just a few meters either side of the centerline of each track. They also had a higher LOD around the track areas with custom terrain textures, as the user would obviously only be meters above the ground and so needed more detailed ground textures than a flightsim user. These textures were blended out to lower LOD levels as distance from the track increased.
Jon
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It is easier to see what Microsoft is doing if you look at their Xbox strategy.
And Game Pass is the new business model.
Put simply, it is cheaper than making new games to make a game then upgrade it regularly with GOTY and Anniversary editions to bring subscription folks back to play it again like it is new content.
So, MSFS, much like Halo Infinite, will see new content and support for years longer than we were used to before. But we will also see fewer true first party produced sequels per title now that the Game Pass model is driving the moneymaking strategy.
Ten years? I expect full online server support at LEAST for that time. But likely we will see a slowdown in content updates as the next console generation nears and MSFS 2028 or 2030 (or whatever) is developed.
So as long as the Series consoles are king, I expect MSFS will continue to see updates like we have been getting. At the end of that cycle, we will see Asobo (or whoever MS contracts) allocate manpower towards the next flight sim project, and updates for 2020 will likely start to slow down.
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