Microsoft Flight Cancelled - Feature Creep Episode 9 By Tarmack
21Flight is grounded. The most recent iteration of the rather infamous Microsoft Flight Simulator was built as a free to play game and included an incredibly lackluster selection of areas in which to fly as well as planes to send up into the sky. It's an unfortunate state of affairs because a good many gamers have very fond memories of playing Flight Simulator. The company announced that they have halted further development and sent the devs to work on other projects.
Now keep in mind it's only been out since February. You had access to a portion of Hawaii and 2 planes included for free. They put out another 6 planes and 2 map packs, one of which was a portion of Alaska and the other was the rest of Hawaii. $94 buy's them all.
Any of this sound familiar? It should. Microsoft Flight is a classic example of cut content for sale later. You don't have an art team model Hawaii Island and then have them come back and finish the rest of the islands later.
It's also a classic example of a terrible way of doing free to play. If you follow the industry of free to play games, you will find that there are a few examples similar to Flight in that they are little more than a demo. If you build a flight simulator and provide two garbage planes it is difficult to entice people to pay money to unlock more content. A game like Flight needs a hook. It needs excitement and wonder and quite frankly the game didn't even look that good.
This blunder and lack of base content to satisfy those willing to try the game out is what marked it's doom. A free to play game has to be awesome right out of the gate in order to trigger that need for people to play more of it. You don't give the player two crappy planes and a barren wasteland of a map to fly around in. You give them 4 or 5 awesome planes and a beautiful high res landscape to immerse themselves in. If the game isn't incredible, free or not, right away there is no way you are going to keep the title ahead of the tsunami of other games on the market.
Now the Flight series has in the past had a rather notable setback. You will notice no major cities, crash detailing or accurate cockpit controls are present. We have 9/11 to thank for that. The video game became a scapegoat because the airlines didn't want to face the embarrassment of having insufficient protective measures between the passengers and cockpit.
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