This is quite a pleasant surprise!
Seems from initial reactions that most people will be jumping to 2024 as I haven’t seen any detailed mention of this news, but for those who will stay with 2020, its an impressive announcement I think. Jorg read some info as to how far ahead they are planning on several updates for 2020 -
Sim update 28 … wow
Will MSFS 2020 continue to be supported, or will it eventually be phased out in favor of the 2024 version?
Isn’t it supposed to be for ten years?
I don’t doubt what you’re saying, it’s just Jorg originally said ten years - that’s eight.
I do not believe Jorg every specifically said that the original release I.e. 2020 would be supported and developed for 10 years. He also later (at a later date) went on to say the 10 year comment was not an exact period of time… more of a 10 years and beyond.
There has also been no comments that I recall around what support constitutes. I rather suspect as time goes on that “support” for 2020 is more likely to become critical fixes and a sharing of content for 2024 that is backwardly with 2020.
Right, but (2028 - 2020) is still eight.. which is less than ten. No mention was made of MSFS 2024 - in fact, it used to just be MSFS (not MSFS 2020) so I took it as MSFS was going to be supported and developed for ten years. I didn’t take it to mean that I’d have to buy a new version every four years which is what’s happened so far.
I doubt if they will simply turnoff access to the servers for 2020 in 2028 somehow. Personally given all the world updates we received for 2020 i overall think it has been good value for money.
Just providing continued access to the severs for scenery could be perceived as support for 2020. Until such a time as MS prevent access of 2020 to the servers I think you can regards it as being supported.
I still use msfs 2020 and there is issues with brightness and sepia specially during night flight. There is a post for those issues but it seem the post is resolved for msfs 2024 and not for 2020. I am not happy with this and I think support seem to be aim for 2024. Before arrival of 2024 in mid november, there was no issues for that. After arrival of 2024, I began to get issues with sepia and brightness.
I believe MS will support 2020 for a number of years. A better question might be will the 3rd party developers support 2020. As 2024 progresses (bug fixes) many now flying 2020 will migrate to 2024 as some (many) have already done. As the market share for 2020 decreases…addon development may also decrease with developers looking for the largest market.
The reason for 2024 (as I understood it) was the core program invalidated some of the wishlist items and requested improvements. They will port some things back to MS2020 if the core will allow it, but some things will never be put into 2020 because of limitations. It may die on its own and it may happen before the 10 years is up or perhaps when MSFS 2028 arrives.
on of the few downsides of msfs (2020, 2024 any beyond) in the cloud era is that after MS stops supporting the game you won’t be able to play it anymore properly, because of the fact that the world can’t be streamed anymore to your pc.
unfortunately the only way to circumvent this problem is to choose older products from MS or those of other vendors - which i am sure you already know about.
The next bit of support needed for MSFS2020 is for ATC to stop sending IFR
flights off at the wrong altitude.
Eastbound is ODD, Westbound is EVEN.
Cessna 172 flying eastbound over a 500ft elevation landscape ( England ), can go to 3000’, NOT 4000’.
C172s over England have only a limited number of Aerodromes with ILS.
The International Airports have far too high Landing Fees, and are the ones with ILS.
So it’s VFR. Risk being turned round. 
Developers would rather support a stable platform. Lower costs. FS24 will not be a stable platform until at least 2026.
Latest steam stats still show more 2000 users than 2024. That’s not likely to change and time soon.
Besides, it’s easier to develop for 2020. Which means lower costs, which translates to lower prices, which means greater sales.
I personally believe that MS has the wrong approach to flight simulation both in the days of Fs9, FSX etc before they walked away from flight sim and now MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024. They release 2020 and spend several years ironing out bugs and refining their product and then develope and release another complete new version and start all over again.
LM basically took FSX and turned it into pretty rock solid P3D v6.
I expect overall there are still more users on 2024, due to casual Game Pass users, but either way it’s still been a terrible launch.
The MS Flight Simulators are a success story for several decades. So it seem interesting enough also from a business perspective for a giant like microsoft. Yes, also the business side must be healthy for a project like this, developers don‘t exist from air and love.
The MS simulators maxed out the resources of their eras pushing simulation to the limits and going more the revolutionary way rather than the solid evolutions supports that.
That‘s why MSFS2020/24 is for some aspects generations ahead but has the problem of maybe not being rocksolid from the beginning. (I think X-Plane is neither, took also several iterations to improve each version even though it is more the evolutionary product)
MS approach can‘t be too wrong and I‘m very happy that they commit to so many years of support and development for their product. FOR A ONE TIME PAYMENT PRODUCT. Where do we get that nowadays without subscriptions? And how many increments and (cost free) enhancements did we get in the past? FSX acceleration expansion was not for free and the only bigger feature increment for FSX.
I never understood the 10+year commitment to be for the 2020 version only but for the franchiseincl. successors. A commitment to Flight Simulators generally not to one Version.
I‘m not a big fan of banana software that comes green to the customers and yes, FS24 will take some time to be a solid platform. MS goes a different way than their competitors in flight sims but I don‘t see that they are going the wrong way.
And I hope that they are successful, the time between FSX and FS20 was the worst time for me 
LMFO already Fs2024 is more stable then FS2020 before 2023 40th Anniversary Update
Also, majority of issue is relate with Carreer mode … Core of Flight Sim 24 is more stable ouside litle issue with sim connect API ..
They have already stopped supporting MSFS2020 as can be seen by the number of closed reports marked as “will not be fixed”. There is an entire topic on it.
Waiting for a single update
MSFS 2020 needs no support! It is fine just the way it is. It will be getting the Brazil world update!
