Microsoft Flight Simulator was one of the best things to come out of E3—and the prospect of soaring over realistic cities and snowy mountains just got even more appetizing. The game will support "third-party content development and community content creation", the development team confirmed in a blog post this week, and no doubt modders are already licking their lips.
Microsoft didn't specify exactly how it would support community content, but my guess is that we'll see something akin to the Minecraft Marketplace, a curated selection of mods, both paid and free, made by the community. Microsoft added that it was "aware of the concerns in the current ecosystem and are working to address them", and that it "genuinely want[s] to work closely with the community in the development of this title". We should find out more about its plans soon: we'll start seeing the development roadmap in August, it said.
The dev team also tried to dispel any concerns that Microsoft Flight Simulator will be in any way a casual game. "We are making Microsoft Flight Simulator. Emphasis on the word SIMULATOR," it said, stressing that it was "designed for PC" first before being optimized for Xbox.
It also committed to making its game accessible to all players. "Whatever your abilities are, if you want to fly, we are going to do whatever we can to make that happen. Yoke and pedals, mouse and keyboard, controller, etc. No pilot should be left behind." Given the company's work on the Xbox Adaptive Controller, I have high hopes.
Read the full blog post here, and Andy's discussion of what we saw at E3 is this way.
