It's official. TSInsider has acknowledged that the next version of MSTS is on hold indefinitely. The announcement goes on to say that MS game developments are being focused on Windows - Live, a free online gaming service.
My guess is that's the end of the road for development in any form of MSTS as we know it by Microsoft. If I were a developer - and I'm not - I would consider developing an advanced train sim that was backwardly compatible with MSTS. There are over 214,000 third-party freeware items available at Trains-Sime.com alone. Then there's the British counterpart, UKTrainSim, and the many individual sites around the world. Any newcomer sim developer is going to have to offer far more than a few routes and some rolling stock to be of any interest to me. It would be a tough hill to climb without acknowledging the huge amount of investment in time and interest that's already out there. Since I don't think MSTS 2 had any promise of being backwardly compatible, it's maybe not such a bad thing that progress has stopped. It also makes me wonder of MSTS didn't already realize this when makingtheir decision to stop work.
The good news is that the old girl, MSTS, still has plenty of life left in her and those of us who aren't planning to upgrade our hardware anytime soon will not have to worry about being left out in the cold in these difficult economic times.
Cheers,
-- Al
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