Flight Sim dev suffers major lay-offs

Reports state the entire team has been axed.

Gamasutra reports that Washington-based ACES Studio, the Microsoft-owned development studio responsible for the the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, has been badly affected by Microsoft's ongoing job cuts.

Development sources have told Gamasutra that that a large percentage of the studio's staff have been let go, some sources stating that the entire Flight Simulator team has been axed.

The future of one of Microsoft's longest running franchises (the first MS branded Flight Sim was released in 1982) is now uncertain, as is the development of ACES Studio's Microsoft Train Simulator 2 and Microsoft ESP, a visual simulation platform based on Flight Simulation X technology.