Recent news have emerged with xbox cutting several studios and according to Matt booty or whatever his name is, they want smaller games aka smaller teams.
I sincerely hope they won’t touch MSFS when we finally got our platform back after many years since FSX.
Asobo isn’t owned by MS. It’s an independent studio that makes games for other platforms also. Look up Plague Tale series, and there are others ofcourse. In case of MSFS, MS contracted Asobo to develop the simulator for them.
On a side note, I see many people keep blaming Asobo for things they don’t necessarily control. I assume most high level decisions are made at MS and Asobo just doesn’t as told. Although without knowing the terms of the contract, this is speculation.
The worse MS can do is they can stop funding MSFS and end the business agreement with Asobo. Not sure how Asobo will get impacted financially by such a move, but surely it will kill MSFS.
I hope MSFS won’t see such a fate in this round at least, unless it’s a really loss making product. While MSFS may not be very mainstream, it certainly has a halo factor to it even to non msfs gamers. It’s a technical showcase of what different Microsoft technologies can do when placed together. So I think MS would want to keep investing in it for that only. Let’s just hope for the best.
After reading the articles, it’s pretty disturbing regardless of the future of MSFS. Not sure MS is trying to do exactly by saying they need smaller games and then cutting a studio that was providing just that. Unless smaller games mean something else.
Hopefully MS will release FS for PS5 and Switch, try to increase profits that way before they take more drastic measures to ‘make more money’!
If MS cut funding, would we still be able to run the sim though? I think all the server stuff would go away as well. Would that leave the sim in a usuable state?
Yes, I want to see MSFS run on a Switch. 
Well, I also said this in my comment.
MSFS on switch, running locally? That’s…
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an interesting thought. Yeah, why not. But I don’t see it happening any time soon. May be the next version. Otoh, running from cloud is certainly feasible.
2024 will be even more Server based so yes eventually there will come a day some time in the hopefully dim and far future when it will stop.
But being an old pensioner I do hope I wont see that day myself.
Honestly, if they did this, I would genuinely cry (in fact words cannot describe how upset I’d be)… but as others have said, Asobo is contracted by, not owned by MS. The current iteration is also making money continuously, something FSX didn’t do, apart from the one time acceleration pack.
Maybe this was part of the plan, to protect it from such fates? Whereas, Aces was owned by MS. Hopefully they can allay our fears on the next dev stream. 
Since the dawn of micro transactions and in-game purchases, I’ve never seen a game that has an in-game marketplace that offers add-on content that is priced more than the base-game. Given that the Xbox user base (which is vast) has no option but to buy add-ons from the Marketplace, all of those transactions have to be generating a fair amount of revenue for the title’s continual development. As a PC user and ex-game developer, I consciously buy from the Marketplace, because I want that percentage that MS takes from my purchases to go towards funding the platform. I know, firsthand, how cutthroat this business truly is.
I truly hope that Microsoft Flight Simulator continues to be a unique presence in the gaming world and because of that unique presence, Microsoft continues to keep the project alive.
I’ve never seen a game that has an in-game marketplace that offers add-on content that is priced more than the base-game.
You mean it is a bit like buying a printer cheaply but paying a fortune for the ink?
Nah, that is a blatant cash grab.
What I meant is that the nature of this game’s in-game purchases are unlike any other I’ve ever seen.
The majorly expensive aircraft in the Marketplace are incredible works of simulation in of themselves and, deservedly, command the price they do.
In fact, they are less expensive than their predecessors available in other simulators.
My statement should in no way be read as a dig or a negative one. I am trying to make the point that the sim is, hopefully, healthy and showing black on the Microsoft ledger, due to its unique potential to generate larger revenue via the Marketplace.
right, gotcha. I completely misunderstood your post.
I agree with all you said above.
I also have some faith in the community. We kept FSX alive for years which demonstrated that there was this unique demand.
I do assume however that eventually the 2020 version will be retired.
I dont mind that really. Although I am not really into the role playing 2024 seems to add, as long as one can continue to fly from A to B in the same ways we can in 2020 it should be fine.
I cannot imagine that 2024 won’t be that and more. I truly believe the new role-playing/career-based activities are optional just as all the content under Activities in 2020 are.
I really don’t think any of us should be alarmed. Microsoft building a sim that is more inclusive to all types of individuals’ varied ways of experiencing flight simulation should be lauded. For the more ways this sim can reach more users, the better the chances of it continuing to be funded and developed for the future – and we all want that.
Maybe come back to P3D?
It’s not like Microsoft hasn’t cancelled its flight simulator product before.
Big companies rarely stay committed to products that aren’t strategic for them. MSFS hardly qualifies in that regard. I don’t think anyone in Redmond would even notice if it went away.
If Microsoft decides to pull the plug, the servers would be cut offline after a while for sure. The simulator would remain playable in offline mode, however if you ever looked at the “offline world”, you wouldn’t want to ever play it that way. 
MSFS 2024 will be even more cloud-based so there’s a chance there will be no option to play it offline at all.
Just to be clear: Asobo Studio doesn’t belong to Microsoft, so they wouldn’t be closed, but losing MSFS would surely result in layoffs from the studio. But they could continue to operate and release games like A Plague Tale, etc.
The real danger here is that Microsoft leadership doesn’t care. These decisions are now out of the hands of Xbox leadership. The highest leadership, CEO Satya Nadella, CFO Amy Hood and president Brad Smith, they don’t care about games living or dying, or what gamers think. They only care about money and their only tool to make more money is cost cutting.
That said, even though there will be more layoffs and studio closures at Xbox, I do think Flight Simulator is safe. I wouldn’t expect it to go away in the next 5-7 years. But also don’t think it can’t be pulled in an instant if they want.
That will be a hard pill to swallow unless P3D ups it’s game. I would take MSFS offline mode with may be ActiveSky injected weather and hopefully xplane like global ortho data. Yes, it won’t be the visual gold standard for VFR flights, but still, the lighting engine, support for much dense geometry in the engine and most importantly, making better use of modern hardware are some positives which will persist. And if you are going to fly airliners only, the that and handcrafted airport addons are most you will need. Although, it can be argued that the selection of available airliners are much better in P3D, still to this date, but I am not leaving my Just Flight and Fenix and FBW and iniBuilds airliners.
That won’t happen. The series X is optimized and the game for direct X. That is not a factor on a PS5 that is unix and opengl based. The series X is a bit ahead of the ps5 CPU and GPU wise in raw (2 flops more - and RT (80 Tflops more) and you can’t get it to run with live plane liveries.) THe ps5 and switch simply are not suitable natively.
However for the switch Game pass streaming of it is.
Not for the PS5 as Sony doesn’t like fair practices or competition.
It is a priority MS studio game as well, and despite what some think, those games are not going to Sony. The only ones are previous multi platform games and lower tier games.
The merger and closure of studios is a factor of the gaming industry. IT has happened many times in the past , especially in the 90’s. You need to merge, combine, get rid of resource hogs, and plan better.
Are you saying these things based on what you think, or do you have access to what Microsoft management is actually thinking.
While they may not care about games living or dying, don’t forget that one of MS Flight Simulator’s main reasons of existence is as a technology demonstrator of a huge number of Microsoft technologies that sell and make gobs of money from. And, obviously, that’s growing by leaps and bounds with the release of 2024.
MSFS is more than a game, and I’m not saying it’s a simulator, too. It’s an extremely high technology product that Microsoft can use for lots of other things.
That’s not true at all.