I’d say the chances are about 99% likely. MS would make a ton of money out of it. More than they would keeping it Xbox exclusive. FS2024 is going to be a major title by the looks of things that looks very geared towards getting in people out with the usual flight sim community. FS2020 already took big steps in that direction. FS2024 will build on it.
FS2024 coming to PS5 would be a big source of extra revenue for Asobo, MS and the third party community. It makes perfect sense.
It makes even more sense when you consider the fact that in light of the Activision take over MS are increasingly just about creating as big a market as possible for their first party titles. It doesn’t matter so much about the platform anymore as long as people become a customer.
Who’s forcing you to? It won’t be coming out on PS5 instead of Xbox. It’ll be coming out on both. Whatever console you have or choose is the one you can play it on. It’ll be cross platform.
There’s already rumors about the midcycle XBOX swirling around, so I think XBOX hardware will be around at least until the end of this console generation closer to the late 2020’s.
But I think this time things are a little different from 10 or 20 years ago. The Microsoft of 2010 still had visions of competing with Apple, building phones and laptops and tablets. Today’s Microsoft has gone ahead and surpassed Apple’s market cap, not on Surface laptops or XBOX (hardware), but on Office and Azure and other subscriptions. Microsoft said themselves in their FTC case that they have “lost the console wars”. XBOX’s market share is small (16%) and even the total installed base is 21%. In Japan they’re a rounding error (something like 200,000 units compared to 4 million PS5’s). I would rate the chances of XBOX (hardware) being retired as higher than ever, but again, I think we’re talking about the end of the decade at which point who knows if consoles are still going to be relevant. Maybe handhelds will be powerful enough by then or maybe we’ll all be wearing self contained headsets.
The part that gives me hope is MS’s seeming dedication to the games themselves. If they are pivoting to allowing their stuff to go multiplatform it means the games themselves are more important than ever. It was good to hear from the last livestream that MSFS had its highest player numbers ever just this past holiday season. If MS keeps backing its games (including MSFS), then it’s good news for us fans regardless of what box we’re sitting in front of (or wearing on our heads).
I agree with you on this although strangely, I don’t think the official statement from Phil Spencer has helped much.
People have built themselves into a state with rumour upon rumour, and I think they were hoping he’d say "No, nothing to worry about ", but he didn’t. Instead, a brief businesslike statement seems to have only added fuel to the fire - I’ve seen lots of “Well they didn’t deny it, so that confirms it. So long Xbox”.
Even with Series X/S continuing as normal though, MS have repeatedly stated that they have no plans for a more powerful mid-gen refresh.
Therefore, there is the theoretical prospect of the most impressive console version of FS2024 being on a PS5 Pro - a competitor’s product.
My guess is the any potential PS5 version won’t take advantage of the extra power of the PS5 Pro. They may even throttle back the PS5 version just to give the upper hand to their own console.
Definitely interesting times ahead. If I was a third party developer for the sim I’d be begging MS to bring FS2024 to the PS5. The amount of potential extra revenue that would open up would be huge for everyone.
You have to stay backwards compatible as long as optimizing current hardware and the OS. MSFS is not going to PS5. They’re just starting to tap into optimizing the series x, they do t need more power for mainstream games yet, and people aren’t going to all miraculously get GB online connections in the next couple years.
MSFS 2024 is going to be akin to when Forza gets two versions on one console, a massive improvement with the same hardware. The midlife series x will shun the optical drive and get some new bits like usb-c, cooling tweaks, and a slight price drop.
Tvs and Internet connections haven’t made that massive leap yet where it’s mainstream. The the cheap tvs will all be running 4k HDR @120hz before a new console is needed. There’s no real market for some massive cloud gaming machine when so many can’t even get 30mbis yet.
There’s a ton of untapped potential when you keep the goalposts steady. I download Xbox games at 850gbis and ping 4 to the US east coast and 70 to Europe, and still see the data stream stammer in MSFS now., let alone in-game pathetic downloads for any update. There’s a way to grow yet before any next gen talk from MS. Give me a WU in under a minute first and prove you can even utilize the current Xbox
The PCs will see huge improvements as the Xbox is optimized. Before, it was just buy more hardware to power through the bloat
I doubt Sony would allow Microsoft/Asobo selling addons on MSFS Marketplace. Asobo would have to offer all the addons via PS Store and Sony would get a cut from every transaction. It never gonna happen.
I will say the BIG hindrance for MS is it’s marriage to Bing. A competitor, like say Xplane could make a move to create a simulation utilizing Google. But it’s of course a Herculean effort to move up to MSFS level with 40 years of experience. The fiscal reward would have to be huge to support it’s creation. In that pairing, they could go with every and all platforms. MS already has additional infrastructure in place to make MSFS feasable, including it’s own OS. It would probably be something to the effect that Google itself would be the ones making the game. But, this Taylor Swift world isn’t exactly filled with people chomping at the bit for flight simulation, especially to the younger generation that have zero interest other than swiping. A big part of your new takers would be a large portion of MSFS people leaving everything they have/had behind for it.
The potential market for flight simulation is fairly capped. If people like their gaming on PS and also want to flight sim on a console, they’d just buy an XB too, it’s effectively one of the lesser expensive ‘parts’ of being a simmer. Really, the XBSX was the cheapest part of the experience, not to mention it’s used for a lot of other things. My kids get plenty out of it on the weekends with Goat Simulator 3 alone. They just shuffle dad’s ‘stuff’ around to get their headbutts on.
It does behoove them to move MSFS from where it is now with carry-over add ons and peripherals, a huge change would leave a lot of people content staying where they are for years. 2024’s interactive ‘jobs’ to accomplish will bring some of the fringe in beyond goofing around with game-pass and a controller, it’s pretty brilliant. Those that just fly for the sake of simulation will find themselves getting new life out of this ‘old’ sim world too. Let alone opening the door to creating more of it 3rd party. Will draw in a few they may just begin to google how do I ‘really’ fly a plane?. But they can’t move too far away from this current generation for a while. They aren’t going to be any less proud of that big Microsoft badge on this for near future and team green, and surely aren’t giving anything over to Sony on the other side of the electronics isle.
MSFS as it is will continue to develop as it is now for some time. Adding ‘life’ to the sim engine while optimizing isn’t going to let this go to waste anytime soon. The 2024 full speed ahead version is going to be akin to the GTAV massive multiplayer vastly extended lease on life.
If anything I can see them maturing this generation and adding a combat version to it. Parachute drops, smoking/burning, ‘destructive’ weather, carriers, rescue missions… Hrmmm
Yep, I see healthy competition between XBOX and PC. Many peripherals work on both with the flick of a switch. That has to be good for everyone.
If one platform allows Nvidia and AMD to push forward with graphics performance that’s great, the benefits will trickle across.
3D Cad/Cam was dominated by Unix workstations 25 years ago, but the accelerated growth of graphics cards every 6 months allowed the PC to dominate at a lower cost. In turn that spawned the XBOX.
You pay your money and take your pick.
I do think a few tweaks in the XBOX design would be good, like complete USB-C compatibility like PC and MAC.
The mid-life Series X is going to shun the optical drive and add USB-C. Same graphics/CPU specs. So they will continue to optimize, and hence improve PC performance too.
This , not just that, Flight Simulator is basically a show case of different Microsoft techs coming together and creating something beautiful. You have DirectX, Bing, Azure and may be GPT (I know it’s not MS but OpenAI) in MSFS 2024.
I mean look at how restrictive even their own platform is to make the flight sim experience same as PC. Initially you had problems with peripheral support, addon support, WASM (still facing issues apparently, pmdg efb not working in Xbox) and what not. All these despite of both product being completely Microsoft owned. Now imagine the hoops ms will have to jump through to get Playstation system team to open up needed areas on their platform so that a Microsoft title can reach it’s full potential. I mean may be those won’t even be necessary in the PlayStation system, but who knows.
I don’t think even MSFS 2024 will be considered even if ms is going to publish for PlayStation. It’s too late in the dev cycle. Unless it’s already planned from the beginning, and they have been working on it at least a few years with playstation in mind, it won’t feasible to publish it in playstation by its release window. Next MSFS title after 2024, may be.
If Microsoft is going multiplatform for non ABK titles as well and the roumors are true, I think sea of thieves and starfield makes a lot of sense. Sea of thieves because its live services game and very popular. You know what other very popular, kinda live services game published by Microsoft is also available in PlayStation? Minecraft. And starfield, because it’s also wildly hyped up and it was already being developed with PlayStation in mind, so it should be less difficult to revive the branch and get things going. MSFS on the otherhand, well, as much as we love this and simming, we are a very small group of people compared to the whole gaming market despite it coming to the Xbox. I don’t think it’s a huge moneymaker for Microsoft. And probably not a very good console seller either. Most of the people of the million plus users that Jorg talks about are probably people who saw it on youtube about how realistic this plane flying game looks like and tried it on gamepass or Xcloud.
, not just that, Flight Simulator is basically a show case of different Microsoft techs coming together and creating something beautiful. You have DirectX, Bing, Azure and may be GPT (I know it’s not MS but OpenAI) in MSFS 2024.