Behind AVSIM Register wall BS....
A restart of the discussion regarding MS' sale of the FS License...
Let me add some clarity here folks...
Remember that FLIGHT was rolled up in May of 2012... In the latter half of 2012, AVSIM was made aware of efforts to sell licenses by Microsoft for its FS product line (note the all inclusive "FS", not specifically FS9, FSX, FLIGHT, etc.). AVSIM subsequently participated in meetings and discussions with a couple of the teams in 2012 and throughout 2013.
We understood from the outset that MS was looking to issue a license to multiple teams.The original terms of the sale of the license were pretty steep thereby ruling out any single participant from the FS commercial community. The teams that were formed, for the most part, reflected that reality. I will leave it to you to figure out how multiple licensees would compete with each other and how they could be expected to meet MS' demands for down payment, commission on sales and control of their IP.
The news we posted yesterday is that ONE licensee will be announced. We can only conclude that the single licensee had significantly deeper pockets and was able to negotiate an exclusive license. What of the other pretty stringent terms of the original license (i.e, IP, commission on sales, etc.) have they been able to negotiate out? We don't know of course.
All the speculation regarding LM, and some others going on here are sure entertaining, but way off base. LMOC bought the license for ESP (as did Northrop). ESP contained the core and hooks for things like submarines, subsurface navigation, etc. that FSX never had. MS developed ESP specifically with the military and military suppliers in mind. Imagine ESP being used as a real time 3D'ish background for flying a UAV in... Imagine operating an underwater ROV using it to provide navigation and cuing. ESP provided the basis for the likes of a LMOC to build upon for their military customers. I am pretty confident in saying that LMOC was not a participant in pursuing the FSX license.
Speculations on who the licensee is are probably going to be mute by the end of this week. There are important questions that should be of concern; distribution methods, EULA's, price, third party content, FLIGHT like distribution of add-on's, ad nauseam.
Just remember that you read it first on AVSIM...
NOTE: Do not turn this into a game vs. violence hijack. If anyone does take it there, they will be banned from this topic entirely.