Microsoft Flight Simulator Making a Comeback, New Title Due Next Year

Interest might have plummeted after Microsoft’s last proper Flight Simulator release, but it’s a series that goes down as an absolute PC classic. It was a sim that, even if you didn’t play it properly, you could still have a ton of fun with. Personally, I didn’t care to learn exactly what I should have to have a successful flight, but I still enjoyed the sensation of preparing the plane for takeoff and ultimately lifting off the ground.

It was sad, then, that Microsoft decided to wind the series down after the release of Flight Simulator X. We did have Microsoft Flight, but that game ultimately failed, despite all the hype surrounding it. Well, Dovetail Games, creators of the popular Train Simulator series, didn’t want to see Microsoft’s classic series go down like that, so it worked on acquiring the rights to the series, and did. The company promises that we’ll see the next version of Flight Simulator in 2015.

The company is also working to bring Flight Simulator X and its Acceleration expansion pack to Steam as Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition later this year. It seems that absolutely no updates to that game will be made, though if priced right, it could prove successful there.

For a developer that’s focused so much of its efforts on its train simulator, some fans of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator are a bit wary about what the series will become. After all, not all simulators are alike, so just because you excel at developing one doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do another any justice. To quell those fears, Dovetail has said that it has an entirely different team dedicated to this next game, though it’s not mentioned where those developers were sourced from. Nonetheless, this release could be huge, and I hope to see it play out like the series’ fans are hoping.