Microsoft Flight Sim head says bringing it to PS5 was his idea, believes it started the ‘avalanche of Xbox titles coming to PS5’
Xbox originally refused his pitch to bring the game to PlayStation, he claims
The head of Microsoft Flight Simulator says the idea to bring the game to PlayStation 5 was his, and that he believes it was the catalyst for all the other Xbox titles being released on Sony’s console.
In an interview with XDA Developers, Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann said he originally pitched a PS5 version of Flight Simulator 2024 after the decision had been made to drastically cut down the game’s file size and stream most of the data through the cloud.
According to Neumann, the decision to greatly reduce the file size opened up the possibility of porting it to other systems, but Xbox was originally against the idea of bringing it to PS5.
“It was my idea, actually,” he recalled. “With Flight Simulator 2020, we came out on PC first in August 2020. One year later, we shipped it on Xbox, and we found millions and millions of new fans on Xbox that had never seen the flight sim because they’re just not PC gamers. A lot of them thought it was great, and a lot of them stayed.
“In 2020, it was already 120 GB when we launched as a download. When we were in 2023, I looked at the install numbers, and it was 300 GB. Then we had our content roadmap, and there was so much new stuff that we were doing that we would be over a terabyte. I said ‘We need to do something’, so we decided to make Flight Simulator 2024 and had the concept of a thin client. Our client is now 8 GB, and instead of putting everyone on your hard drive and making that download huge, we put everything in the cloud.
“That made it possible to go to other platforms, so I proposed, probably two and a half years ago, to go to PlayStation. It was probably a little bit before its time because I was told no.”
Neumann claims that after Xbox refused to bring the game to PS5, someone from Sony then got in touch and requested a port. Neumann believes that this initial contact was what ultimately led to Microsoft’s decision to release numerous Xbox exclusives on PlayStation.
“Somebody from Sony who grew up with flight simulation thought it would be a great addition to the Sony portfolio,” he said. “They reached out proactively to our president, who then came back to me and said: ‘Hey, remember when we talked about the PlayStation thing a year ago? Sony is also interested. I think that really kicked off a whole avalanche of Xbox titles coming to PlayStation.”
The PS5 version of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is released today, with PlayStation VR2 support coming in 2026 via a free update.
“Developed by Asobo Studio in partnership with Microsoft Game Studios, the PlayStation 5 version of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will continue to be updated with both free World Updates and Sim Updates,” according to developer Asobo.
