Microsoft cuts ground Flight Simulator series for good

This post has nothing to do with Nintendo, but because we lost such an important industry icon today in Microsoft’s Flight Simulator series, I decided to write about it anyway.

It’s true. As part of Microsoft’s “restructuring” plan today (layman’s terms: 5,000 layoffs), almost the entire Flight Simulator team was let go in one fell swoop.

I’ll never forget the day I successfully landed a Cessna for the first time (in the 1993 version or there abouts). I missed the Midway airport runway and landed in the middle of a field outside the blocky Chicago skyline, of course, but I landed without crashing nevertheless.

That future generations of geeky kids won’t be able to recreate such a feat–in a Simulator-branded game, anyway–is sad, to say the least.