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Dovetail Games to create new flight sim game series using Microsoft tech

By John Callaham

UK-based Dovetail Games has announced a new agreement with Microsoft that will have the developer create and publish "all-new flight products based on Microsoft's genre-defining flight technology" while also gaining the rights to publish Microsoft's last game in its Flight Simulator series as a digital release on Steam.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition will be released in late 2014 on Valve's game download service via Dovetail Games. It will contain the content in the Gold edition of the 2006 released Microsoft Flight Simulator X combined with its Acceleration Expansion Pack.

The bigger news is that Dovetail Games will use the Flight Simulator engine from Microsoft to create new flight sim games on its own. Dovetail said that it is "currently investigating new concepts in this area and is expecting to bring a release to market in 2015." The specific financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Dovetail Games was formed in 2009 and has released a series of popular Rail Simulator games for the PC over the past several years.

Microsoft Flight Simulator was one of Microsoft's longest running PC software products. The first version was released in 1982, even before the first version of Windows. Microsoft ended up developing and publishing over a dozen games in the series in a span of over 25 years.

In 2009, Microsoft shut down its internal Aces Studio, the team responsible for the Flight Simulator series. The company tried to re-launch the franchise as a free-to-play game called Microsoft Flight in 2012 but stopped adding extra content to the game just a few months after it went online. Microsoft plans to shut down the online servers for Microsoft Flight in October, although the single player portion of the game will still work.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition prepares for landing on December 18

Dovetail Games, the studio behind the ever-so-popular Train Simulator franchise, has announced that Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition will be hitting the PC on December 18. The version of Microsoft's Flight Simulator X will provide gamers with an overhauled airborne experience with "a special introductory price" to invite everyone into the cockpit.

Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition will offer more than 80 missions to test players in a variety of ways, including search and rescue challenges, test pilot scenarios, races and more. Also included in this release will be updated multiplayer functionality (farewell, GameSpy), 20 aircraft, Windows 8.1 support and over 24,000 airports. Unfortunately, there no improvements have been made in the graphics department.

Dovetail Games also states the studio will launch a range of add-ons for the title in the New Year. The company will also be working on future releases using Microsoft's Flight Simulator engine, though no plans have been revealed. Check the announcement post over on the Dovetail Games website for more details.

I will be positive and expect what we need. But I think many are sceptical, especially after MS Flight....

But I will defenitely follow the progress.

Thanks for the heads up