What's wrong with companies teaming up for specific individual products? In this case, Flight Simulator. You license the technology with friendly fees and collab for the life of a single product. Just like all licenses.
(Also, no, MS/Asobo are not doing fine, their photogrammetry is renowned for looking like a molten hellscape, and the bing maps look pretty terrible compared to even plain gmaps, but it's MS so "it has to use Bing" =D)
