The real story of 2017 belongs to . In late 2014, they brought FSX to Steam as the Steam Edition (FSX: SE) . By 2017, this became the definitive way to "buy" the game.

Pilots spent hundreds of dollars on "study-level" aircraft like the 737 or A320.

Despite the new competition, thousands still hit "Purchase" on FSX because:

Lockheed Martin released a 64-bit version of their sim in 2017. This solved the "Out of Memory" (OOM) crashes that plagued FSX for a decade. Why People Still Chose FSX in 2017

The "Learning Center" missions and Rod Machado’s flight lessons.

Users bought "Global" textures to make the 2006-era graphics look like 2017 reality.

Dovetail updated the code to work better with Windows 10.