ESP is a new software product based on the popular PC game Flight Simulator. It’s additionally Microsoft’s first foray into nonentertainment games.

At the end of the 2006 movie Snakes on a Plane, a passenger whose only aviation training was playing video games successfully lands a jumbo jet. Come January, thanks to Microsoft (MSFT), such a scenario won’t be just a cinematic fantasy. On New Year’s Day, 2008, the software giant will release a platform called Microsoft ESP based on Flight Simulator, a 25-year-old video game from Microsoft Game Studios. ESP allows corporations to design customized training simulations.

The first target market: aviation companies that cater to the U.S. military and other clients.

It’s the first instance a major software company has entered the “serious”—or nonentertainment—games arena with a product to help other corporations build their own employee-training video games in-house via a simple, Windows-based program. And priced at only $799 per license, Microsoft ESP poses a cost-effective threat to smaller studios that develop custom games—at a cost of $500,000 and up per game—for corporations, hospitals, and the armed forces.

View Full write-up: BusinessWeek

Orginal post by (author unknown)