Hello everyone,
I want all of you to know we have been following this thread very closely since it first started last week. I have personally read all 230 posts in this topic as of the time of this writing.
First, I want to thank everyone who has participated in this thread for keeping the conversation civil and constructive. Too often on these forums, any negative feedback about Microsoft Flight Simulator turns into what can only be described as angry rants. Posts like those are not helpful or productive, so it’s very refreshing for us to read a thread like this one. While it is overall negative in tone, the posts here are mature and contain many pieces of valuable feedback for the dev team.
I have a few comments in response to some specific concerns I have seen mentioned here (paraphrasing multiple posts instead of quoting people directly):
Microsoft doesn’t care about the player community on the Xbox platform. PC players are the priority and Xbox players are second-class citizens.
I can assure you this is not the case. We care about all our players equally, regardless of platform. There is not a single day that goes by where our forum moderators and Community Managers don’t have to close threads and remove multiple posts because a PC player is making blanket insults against all Xbox players by implying they are less than or not “real simmers” or making other kinds of elitist, gatekeeping comments. We know this isn’t the case. We know players on the Xbox platform are just as enthusiastic and dedicated to the hobby of flight simulation as those on the PC platform are. There are many reasons why any given flight simmer might choose to play on PC over Xbox or vice versa. Our goal is to make everyone who enjoys Microsoft Flight Simulator feel welcome and valued regardless of their platform.
Xbox players feel like concerns/bugs/issues relating specifically to their platform are being drowned out by PC players. Due to the voting mechanism used to prioritize topics for the weekly Development Update Blog post and monthly Dev Q&A, Xbox-specific items do not receive sufficient votes to bubble up to the top of the list.
We agree with you on this, and the Community Team has been discussing some ways in which we can make Xbox players feel like their specific concerns are being heard by the devs. To be clear, we have always passed on community feedback and the top priorities of all our players (PC, Xbox, VR, MS Store, Steam, etc.) to the developers, but I understand the perception that some groups may feel like their concerns are not being addressed because the responses in our dev updates and Q&A sessions focus on the top-voted issues from all forum members. Due to this voting system, the top priorities will gravitate toward the concerns of the biggest player subgroup(s). I don’t have any specific details to share with you at this time, but as a team we are discussing for 2022 some ways in which we can ensure we dedicate some time and space in our Dev Updates and Q&A sessions not only to the top-voted issues but also to some important player concerns that don’t reach the top of the voting list.
In the meantime, I encourage you to continue posting your feedback, bug reports, and wishlist requests in a mature and constructive manner. That is by far the best thing you can do to ensure your concerns are noted and ultimately shared with the developers (this advice also applies to any PC players reading this post, by the way).
Thanks,
MSFS Team