Milano, April 1, 2009
After the demise of the ACES studio, many users feared for the future of their favorite simulator. Now, FSDreamTeam comes to the rescue:
In an unprecedented move, VIRTUALI s.a.s, the parent company of FSDT, has decided to acquire Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), for about 100 bilion US$, to be payed part in cash, part in free copies of FSDT sceneries.
"We had a substantial amout of spare cash, after our latest successful scenery releases like JFK and Geneva, so we decided to make a gift to the loyal users community, and save Flight Sim by buying Microsoft", said an unspecified source at FSDT
"I can't wait to be able to use FSDT sceneries on my PC, FOR FREE!! This is the deal of the century!!!", said MS CEO Steve Ballmer, in a recent interview.
Under the FSDT direction, the whole MS Office, Windows and XBOX360 teams will be disbanded and merged into a big FLIGHT SIM Team of several thousand of developers and graphic artists, that will create the next-generation flight simulator, that will be able to run flawlessly on every PC in the world, including the latest trend in the market, the small factor 299$ netbooks.
The new Flight Simulator will be compatible with each and every scenery/aircraft and addon ever released since the start of the flight sim franchise. This was a specific requirement to close the deal, since VIRTUALI, the purchasing company, had a couple of products developed for MSFS 4.0 that couldn't be used anymore on later version of the sim. Now, they'll relive a new life under the new uber-backward-compatible flightsim engine.
After the announcement, Microsoft shares went down 99.9%. Apple and Sony shares went both up about 80%, because many analysts think that, with the whole MS Windows and Xbox360 teams routed to do Flight Sim developement only, the Mac OSX and the Sony PS3 might prevail over Microsoft in the next years (or weeks).
For more informations about this historic deal, please look at
Microsoft Press Releases Page
