Hi Olof,
It is good to hear your thoughts on this.
I think X-P IOS is a red Herring and isn't a primary development area and never will be. I still have X-P 9 on my android tablet and it is great fun for a few minutes whilst waiting in the car etc. XBOX is a different ball game, MS see it as the future for gaming.
I think the question one has to ask is - are MS
SERIOUSLY going to concentrate all the effort into
two versions of FS ??? - one for XBOX and one for PC ?
. My thoughts are that, initially they will develop both as it cons - err I mean - encourages - 3rd party developers to produce great conversions. But, it will very soon - maybe in a year or so - become almost exclusively XBOX orientated in development. That immediately brings in limitations due to hardware constraints and 'add-ons'.
I can see MS offering a range of superb 'add-ons' (that fit their XBOX criteria), but available via the 'app store' / XBOX store. Hence, all the developments taking place by the existing add on developers for PC will be forced (by the market) to make their add-ons fully compatible with the XBOX version and also available via the 'store' - free or paid. That by itself would, I believe, almost certainly mean dumbing down the quality and having consequences in having to pass a minimum standard to even be available at all to be offered as an addition.
It will be interesting to actually see FS running on an XBOX, but I am not expecting miracles or anywhere (at all) near high end PC performance. In fact, if the experience was indeed 'good enough' then for MS it would be a total win win as the XBOX is less than half the price of even a reasonable GPU for a PC.
In that case, rather than be seen as a stepping stone to a PC based 'high end' experience, it would be the norm and there would be very little point in any PC development taking place - by both the game producers and the add on producers. However, even if the experience on XBOX is really good, then the limitations in respect of add on pre-requisite requirements / standards would be totally XBOX orientated. Any external hook ups to, say, home cockpits or external devices would, I believe be simply not viable due to the Xbox hardware limitations.
I believe that ALL additions to XBOX FS would be via the store.
I also believe the future for XBOX is - in MS's opinion, more or less totally 'cloud based'. Cloud based gaming is like VR, the ' next big thing ' . where as pundits have being saying that about VR since the 1990's but it is only the last 10 years or so that the cloud based 'revolution' in gaming was 'just around the corner', and still is, and probably still will be in 2, 3 or 5 years. Certainly there is limited cloud based offerings in use today, such as parts of MSFS streamed geo visuals but the shear HP needed to get the most out of them is incredible, and also a decent internet connection - which very few people have, and will only decline rapidly if more people were to try to utilise it. The internet service to the home has limited bandwidth to mere mortals. That is rapidly getting eaten up in with 'streaming' services offering totally unnecessary higher and higher streaming rates (bandwidth usage) for damn TV streaming services. (and that is not even touching on the issues (HUGE issues) of latency !)
It is a self defeating vicious circle where to be able to offer something 'cloud' based' is simply not scalable.
As for home cockpit uses, external monitor support, things like AM etc, then I don't see a future in XBOX at all.
And then we have the 'all new' (read - get rid of the crap people don't use and try to cash in on other stuff) WIN 11
Oh wait - with BUILT IN XBOX game pass support that is no longer an 'option' as they intend to push it completely.
It is an interesting 'vision'. But, I am old enough to have seen the
home 'computer revolution' from the very beginning - not as a kid, but as an adult - and to have been actively involved. Unfortunately, I only see this as - mostly - a backwards step.
All in my opinion of course! .
And just to add - I would love to proven wrong. !
Joe