What does the Asobo tail number/call sign, ASXGS, indicate?
Asobo Studio Xbox Game Studio?
Correct.
And people laughed when I said the original target for MSFS was XBox…
(ducks and runs away laughing!)
(Answer is pretty obvious when you look at who Asobo was before they started on MSFS, essentially an Xbox software and hardware development studio…)
Except that Xbox Game Studios is simply Microsoft’s game development brand and is nothing to do with Xbox hardware.
Except that Xbox Game Studios, as a namesake, didn’t exist prior to the invention of the original Xbox.
Go to Asobo’s website and read their history…
True, but even PC only MS games are under the XBox Games Studio divison. That’s where it all falls now.
Asobo Studio is the developer of this game. Xbox Game Studios is the publisher.
Xbox Game Studios was originally called Microsoft Game Studios, then Microsoft Studios. The name change was done because a) Microsoft has acquired a lot of new studios under their umbrella, and b) Xbox has become much more than just a console.
Xbox Game Studios being the publisher of a game has nothing to do with the target platform of the game itself. The Age of Empires series is published by XGS as well, yet they’re only available on PC. Microsoft Flight Simulator was also developed with PC in mind first, they quickly dropped Xbox One for obvious technical reasons, and the Series X|S versions followed only a year later. The focus during development was solely on PC.
My point was that Microsoft chose Asobo to develop MSFS, and, up to the release of MSFS, Asobo was pretty much exclusively an Xbox software and hardware developer, who also happened to also release on PC sometimes. But their main focus was development for Xbox (for instance, they did a lot of work on the Kinect software and hardware).
Hence, in my view, and it makes total sense to me, Microsoft’s main target for MSFS platform was always Xbox, that’s very likely where they expected to bring in the most cash most efficiently (since they own the whole ecosystem).
Doesn’t mean they weren’t smart enough to know that PC users would be the power users driving development path and 3rd party software, at least until development of 3rd party addons was working on Xbox.
But, it also seems Microsoft believed that for MSFS to get out of the gate quickly, they HAD to support import of FSX 3rd party addons, as this was built into the original contract with Asobo that it had to support FSX flight modeling and addons (based on language in the original SDK that has since been removed). Obviously, this requirement went away pretty quickly as the ability to use FSX gauges was completely broken by the 2nd or 3rd update, and was never revived (mostly due to Xbox and Microsoft Games in general sandboxing requirements.).
To be clear, I always thought it was a good thing that MSFS is supported by the Xbox platform, an excellent thing in fact.
All of their major game releases up to MSFS also released on the Sony PlayStation. Their upcoming Plague Tale: Requiem is also going to be released for PlayStation. It is not accurate to characterize them as mainly an Xbox developer.
When I looked at their website two years ago, it focused pretty exclusively on the Xbox development expertise. Seems they’ve updated their site since then.
They are still laughing of course. You are just wrong with this narrative you are peddling.
A reminder about the Code of Conduct on this forum. Please be respectful toward each other without name-calling.
As the OP’s question has been answered, closing topic.