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Microsoft Flight Simulator has over a million players on Xbox Game Pass for PC

Flight Simulator the platform's biggest launch to date, with "one million pilots and counting"

It’s no huge surprise that Microsoft Flight Simulator is a hit, and Microsoft confirmed today that yes, it’s huge: more than a million players have taken to the friendly skies in Flight Simulator through Xbox Game Pass for PC alone.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is also available on Steam, and we don’t have numbers for that as yet – all we know is that it’s hit an all-time high of 61,829 concurrent players on Valve’s platform. Through Game Pass for PC, where Flight Simulator is included as part of the monthly subscription, Microsoft says its one million unique players have logged more than a billion miles in the virtual air.

The company shared some more interesting statistics about its first million players: the most popular airport is New York’s John F. Kennedy International, while the most popular aircraft (in descending order) are the Daher TBM 930, the Cessna Citation CJ4, and the Airbus A330 Neo. The most popular destination? “Your house”, according to Microsoft’s figures. Players have flown more than 26 million flights and on Twitch, the sophisticated simulation game has racked up more than 6.5 million hours watched.

Here’s a brand new trailer:

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We’ve enjoyed flying around the world a lot, as you can read in our Microsoft Flight Simulator review. Microsoft points out that launch is “the beginning of a journey for us” and that “this is just the start”, which is probably a good thing – some notable buildings in certain parts of the world have been rendered a bit strangely by Flight Simulator’s rendering algorithms.

“There is plenty more to come on our flight itinerary including world updates, sim updates, and future themed DLC”, Microsoft says.