Although MS Access had been upgraded with each new version of Office. The desktop side of the product had appeared to have lacked development and sometimes suffered from some strange marketing decisions. In particular its omission in 2014 from some of the Office 365 subscriptions.
On Friday the 4th of November Microsoft announced that it would be included in the Office 365 Business and Business Premium subscriptions.
MS Access Office 365 announcement
Not only that but it would appear that Microsoft seem to be actively embracing a more visible development strategy for the product. To be fair for many years they have had regular summits at headquarters with super users to allow them to give feedback on product.
They now have a suggestion box that gives some indication of how they are collecting information on what developments they should be working on and are working on in the future
MS Access Suggestion Box