Options.
I completely agree that there is no good reason to assume that Asobo is less capable of giving us a very workable AI ATC than any 3rd party developer.
This isn’t a case of “casual” vs “hardcore”. This is a case of what are the options available depending on where you want to fly.
Vatsim, US Coverage
Occasionally I will fly into the Caribbean. Once in a while I will even fly in or out of a US city here or there. Having flown all over the world during my career, I have some favorite routes and destinations. Living in western Canada and only getting the opportunity to fly in the evenings, usually, and the fact that I only fly with live weather, I am limited to either flying in N/A and most of Europe or S/A in the dark or select a flight somewhere around the Pacific. I spent a lot of time bouncing around the Solomon’s and Papua New Guinea and loved the challenges of hundreds of miles over open water trying to find a 1500 foot grass strip in the jungle. Due to weather in that part of the world IFR is a must.
Vatsim is not much of an option for 99% of the flying I do. If you want to fly in the congested US sky or elbow your way around western Europe then there are options for live ATC, otherwise we will just have to wait until LIVE Traffic and AI ATC get sorted out. I am confident they will. The amount of Multiplayer traffic I see in those out of the way places tells me there are a lot of pilots from around the world that have no interest in joining the beaten skies of Europe and the US.