The idea to release the game on Sony's console arose more than two years ago.
As revealed in an interview with XDA Developers with the head of the Microsoft Flight Simulator franchise, Jorg Neumann, it was Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 that became the "catalyst" for the entire wave of Xbox exclusives that began appearing on the PlayStation console.
According to Neumann, the idea to release Flight Simulator on Sony's console came to him about two and a half years ago. In 2023, the team encountered a problem: the size of the game grew to 300 GB, and with content plans, it could exceed a terabyte. The solution was a radical redesign: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 became a simple 8 GB application, with the main content of the game stored in the cloud.
It was this architecture that opened the door to other platforms. Neumann suggested bringing the game to PlayStation 5 to management, but initially received a refusal - "it's too early." Everything changed when Sony itself came up with the initiative: one of its employees, who is fond of simulators, convinced management that the project would perfectly fit into the PS5 ecosystem. After that, the president of Microsoft returned to Neumann with the words: "Remember that conversation about PlayStation a year ago? Sony is also interested".
