Microsoft Closes Aces Game Studio

Microsoft's Aces Game Studio was the developer in charge of Microsoft's Flight Simulator for over twenty years. Now in a shocking news update, Microsoft has announced that along with a 5,000 employee lay off, The Aces Game Studio will be shutting down for good. Microsoft has commented that they haven't deserted the Flight Sim Series.

Since the fall of 2007, Microsoft has been shutting down quite a few of their game studios. FASA Studios, Ensemble Studios and Carbonated Games. Bungie, the dev team responsible for the Halo series, has also left Microsoft to become an independant. Microsoft still maintain an ownership stake in Bungie though.

First EA, now Microsoft? What in the world is going on?

Games For Windows Interface Gets Silent Update

Yesterday, Microsoft released an update for the Games for Windows interface that is a lot cleaner and refined looking. The old interface was similar to the Xbox Live interface where as the new interface takes advantage of many new monitors high resolutions and stretches out along the top of the screen, as opposed to down the middle of the screen.

This update was unknown to the public and was a surprise to many, who assumed microsoft had all its efforts working on the upcoming release of the new Xbox live system.

Microsoft's New Boku Game Design Project

Although not exactly a PC game, I thought this was pretty interesting anyway. Boku is a new visual programming language, currently in development by Microsoft Research, that will allow users to easily create video games visually through the use of icons.

Key Features:

Boku provides an end-to-end creative environment for designing, building, and playing your own new games.

* High level language incorporates real-world primitives: collision, color, and vision.
* Runs on XBox 360 and PC
* Interactive terrain editor
* Bridge and path builder
* Terrain editor - create worlds of arbitrary shape and size
* 20 different characters with different abilities
* Built-in sharing and rating