Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 officially launched today at 8 AM PST, but the initial reception has been far from smooth. Many users, including our team, have encountered significant issues getting the game to run properly. In fact, one of our staff members was unable to install it altogether.
Compounding the frustration, Xbox Game Studios opted not to provide reviewers with pre-launch access. Their statement read: “Due to the availability of online services and scope of the planned Day One patch update, we will distribute codes on launch day rather than in advance. We also want to avoid reviewers being under unrealistic timelines to complete their reviews, and thus made the decision not to have a shortened review period.” This decision has inadvertently led to a chaotic race among reviewers to produce content, even as many struggle to access the game.
Installation Challenges
The download process via Steam was relatively straightforward, with an initial size of just 11.6 GiB. However, the real challenge began upon launching the game. Users were prompted to log in to their Xbox/Microsoft accounts, which seemed to go smoothly until they were met with a persistent loading screen. Initially displaying “0% — Loading language…”, this screen lingered for an agonizing ten minutes. After approximately 30 to 40 minutes, the game finally appeared to finish loading, but another 16 GiB of data had been downloaded in the background, leaving users puzzled about the process.
Once inside the game, the experience did not improve. After navigating through the settings, attempts to launch a flight were thwarted by greyed-out options. Even the Activities menu was largely blank, save for a few tutorials. A restart seemed like a logical step, but this only resulted in being locked out of the game entirely.
Other team members faced similar hurdles. One individual found their installation halted at 70%, while another experienced frequent crashes back to the Xbox dashboard. Error messages indicated insufficient internet bandwidth, despite having a robust 500 Mbps connection. When they could access the game, it would freeze upon attempting to start a flight, further complicating the experience.
Microsoft has acknowledged the issues through a status page for the Xbox Series S|X, stating they are aware of the problems and are working on a fix. They also tweeted that “a subset of users may be experiencing slow download and install times,” a sentiment that seems to downplay the widespread difficulties reported by multiple users across the United States.
While we remain hopeful that these issues will be resolved in due time, the timeline for fixes and the eventual state of the game remains uncertain. The loading screen video does show promise, and there is anticipation regarding the game’s performance compared to its predecessor, Flight Simulator 2020. However, whether it will be less CPU-limited is still a matter of speculation. We will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates on our performance testing and analysis once we can fully engage with the game.
