It’s now official: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has successfully landed on PS5. This is a first for the famous flight simulation game, which has millions of players around the world. However, such a port was not initially unanimously supported by Xbox.
In an interview with XDA Developers, Jorg Neumann, the license manager, discussed the decision to port the game to Sony’s console. Initially, the developers’ goal was to drastically reduce the game’s file size. It had reached 300 GB with Microsoft Flight Simulator launched in 2020. The team therefore chose to create an extremely lightweight 8 GB client and store the content in the cloud.
Once this task was accomplished, Neumann approached Xbox to suggest releasing the 2024 version on PS5. When he made this request in 2023, Microsoft turned him down. Ultimately, it was Sony who contacted him directly to request a port.
“Someone at Sony, who had been passionate about flight simulation since childhood, thought it would be a great addition to the Sony catalog.
They contacted our president directly, who came back to me and said, ‘Remember when we talked about PlayStation a year ago? Sony is also interested.’ I think that really triggered an avalanche of Xbox titles coming to PlayStation.”
