Is Lack of Cross-Progression (Xbox/PC to PS5) a Deal Breaker for MSFS 2024?

The recent news that MSFS 2024 on PS5 will not support cross-progression from Xbox/PC is a huge concern for me, and I suspect many others.

I’ve put in about five months of serious playtime on Xbox to grind for and acquire my Boeing, Longitude, and PC-24. The current career system already feels like a major grind with the constant, high inspection and maintenance fees.

I am more than willing to purchase the game again for PS5 to enjoy the benefits of that platform, but having to start the entire career progression from scratch is incredibly off-putting. The time investment required to earn high-end aircraft is substantial.

Microsoft has shown it can be done with games like Sea of Thieves, where you simply link your Microsoft account on PS5 and all your progress, unlocks, and gold transfer over. This provides the choice to play on your preferred platform while keeping your investment.

If this cross-progression feature isn’t implemented, I believe it will be a significant deterrent for dedicated simmers to purchase the PS5 version. Is anyone else feeling this way? We should raise this as an important quality-of-life feature!

I think the number of people who have a Xbox and will also want to play it on PS5 is pretty low. I agree that the fact cross connections are not possible is a bummer, but I think your issue will not be one that many will share.

Mathijs Kok
PMDG

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I agree with you :100:. I already have a PS5 and would like to have the sim available on it without having to start Career mode all over again. I would also like my PMDG, A2A, Just Flight aircraft and my Navigraph subscription to be available without having to purchase them all over again.
Like you say, I would be happy to pay again for the base sim but I fear that would be deemed unfair by the 3rd party dev’s who would not benefit from the open transferability.
Hopefully in time a compromise can be found to enable multiplayer compatibility across devices and a way to access Career mode but still requiring us to repurchase 3rd party planes etc as added extras.

I don’t know if that is even possible :thinking:

It is absolutely bewildering that in this day and age, cross-platform functionality isn’t the standard. Losing months of Career progression is a huge waste of time, and having to repurchase your entire sim fleet to switch to a platform with better peripheral support is completely unreasonable.

You hit the critical point: the industry needs to find a compromise that lets us pay for the base sim again but respects our past financial and time investments by allowing that progress and content to carry over.

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I also think there might be an issue around the fact that if you’re on a PC and have bought planes that have a more complex code attached, it becomes nigh on impossible to transfer them to a different console. This may very well apply to the base sim as well.
However, if you already fly on an xbox I don’t see why that is not transferable.

It would be great if a dev could explain the intricacies of the issues

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I have on PC and also a PS5, it would be great to jump between them.

This is a streaming sim, right?

We access it with a Microsoft account, right?

It saves things like control profiles, logbooks, aircraft, scenery, etc. in the cloud, and loads them as needed, right?

Are you telling me that our career progress is not saved to the cloud, and can’t be accessed regardless of which platform we’re launching the sim on?

That seems…counterintuitive.

PC/Xbox to PS5 is a different mix of many code aspects I suspect. Plus all the legal and financial implications that raises.

Yes they both stream and I suspect in the future it may be possible to meld the 2 worlds together but thatwill be once all the angst and pressures settle.
It would be great if it could be explained to us what the challenges would be.

I know I drifted off a bit, perhaps making a sweeping generalization.
Mostly though, I was wondering why career mode progress isn’t common to all platforms. I get that a plane in the PC or Xbox or PS/5 might have different code.

But a takeoff is a takeoff, a landing is a landing, and taxi speed is taxi speed, right?
Or perhaps I misinterpreted this:

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No, you are right, we both would like career mode to cross platforms as well as multiplayer availability. I have seen quite a few forum folk stating they would welcome this too. They especially want to play with their friends who own different platforms.
What makes this difficult to do could only be explained by a developer. Or if it is protectionism, then by MS. What are the chances of us ever getting it explained :thinking:, who knows? :person_shrugging:

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I’m not that familiar with PS5. What are those benefits?

I think no cross play is a bummer, but I would guess that cross-progression support for dual console owners is a vanishingly small overlap.

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The thing is it would prevent folk from having to fork out on a PS5 when Xbox folds and shifts to handheld. It also enables cross platform play with friends. It prevents starting all over again in Career mode. Those are a few benefits that are to be seen.

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As a dedicated player, I’ve primarily been gaming on XB. However, with the news that this title is finally launching on PS, I was looking forward to making the switch. The deciding factor for me, and the reason I am so keen to move platforms, is the confirmed VR support on the PS console. I know that if I choose to remain on XB, I will likely never have access to that feature, which would be a significant loss for my gaming experience.

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As far as I understand, you can‘t use the MS account, therefore you do not have access to the progress. And if I again understand this correct, this is a legal issue not a technical one (source of the issue in this case is Sony)

I suspect a legal issue. Furthermore, the developers are likely looking to profit from PlayStation PS users, as I believe the PS market is separate from the PC and XB market. The situation wouldn’t be so frustrating if the career mode wasn’t such a grind. Given the high repair and maintenance fees, I’m facing several weeks of grinding before I can even begin flying the aircraft I want and build a fleet.

While I agree people should have that choice, chances are people who already own the Xbox and PC version are not most likely going to buy the PS5 version, only people I see buying the PS5 version mostly are new simmers coming in from that platform side.

Let alone, I have seen mutliple players on many games and forums state how they do not want to create a Microsoft account just to be able to play a Microsoft game, and I am talking about established PS players who have only played PS their whole life. It also the reason why there is no crossplay between XBOX/PC players and PS players. PC players are the same exact thing, I remember when Sony would say you would need to sign in to a PSN account to sync your progress and trophies for PC players when they released their games on that platform, the whole PC community went up into flames saying that should not be mandatory and threatened to not buy they game if they did that. So maybe Microsoft is playing it safe here in not wanting to force PS players in having to link a MS account to sync progress for those long term PS players.

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If you know what you are doing and stick to the SDK fully (the FS2024 one), there is no difference between platforms. Our B777 series runs exactly the same code on Windows and Xbox. And we assume it will be the same on PS5. Keep in mind that the sim runs in a sandbox and is very much isolated from the OS.

Mathijs Kok
PMDG

Thanks Mathijs, it seems as if you are suggesting they could potentially make cross platform playability work because even PMDG’S planes would have few issues in PS5.

Would you be able to suggest why a decision was taken not to open up cross console/platform play?

But it doesn’t have to be forced. It could be optional. If a PS player had a reason to synch, because they ALREADY have an MS account, or they really want to play online with their friends that already play on another platform, then that would be a step they can take.

If it’s a new PS player - it’s their first time with a Flight Sim on their console - then they just skip that and have a new separate experience.

I get that this would cause complications if further down the road in future, they wanted to link with a friend that this might then wipe their progress but that is a problem that could be overcome too from a data point of view. Oh well it is what it is now.

The MSFS career mode’s economy is draconian and fundamentally flawed, making it actively hostile to casual players. We are talking about weeks of dedicated play just to see marginal returns. My friends on PlayStation will absolutely despise the relentless financial penalties: the excessive inspection fees, the high repair costs, and the breakneck speed at which parts degrade. Coupled with a truly negligible passive income stream, the system feels rigged to keep players stuck. The time investment simply doesn’t pay off, ensuring that the casual base will hit a financial brick wall and quit out of sheer frustration. What do you guys think?

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