Word hit the net last week that Microsoft were cutting 1400 jobs over the next 18 months but the brunt of the casualties so far seem to be in the entertainment division. It looks like most of the Aces team responsible for the long running Flight Simulator series of games have lost their jobs, leading to speculation that there will be no further developments in this area. 

Microsoft Flight Simulator has been part of the computing landscape for nearly as long as PCs have been around – amazingly the series started in 1978 although the first Microsoft branded version came out in 1982. In the 25 years since that first version arrived it’s seen a dedicated following spring up, together with a host of hardware and software addons.

Luckily for flight sim buffs X-plane (Flight Sim’s main competitor) still looks strong and it wouldn’t surprise me if a number of current add-on vendors started looking that way for potential converts.

Via [Gamasutra]