Xbox Entertainment Studios being closed

Halo shows and Atari documentary still moving forward

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Microsoft has announced that it will be closing Xbox Entertainment Studios, and shuttering most of the projects currently in the works.

In an e-mail to staff (via Game Informer), Xbox head Phil Spencer said the studios will be closed in the coming months. Shows already in development like Halo: Nightfall, the Halo television series, and the Atari documentary Signal to Noise will continue as planned. The letter also promises continued parternships with content providers. Entertainment Studio heads Nancy Tellem and Jordan Levin will stay on to complete the in-progress work, but the letter isn't clear what their roles will be after that's completed.

"Change is never easy, but I believe the changes announced today help us better align with our long-term goals," Spencer wrote. "We have an incredible opportunity ahead of us to define what the next generation of gaming looks like for the growing Xbox community. I have a great deal of confidence in this team and know that with clarity of focus on our mission and our customers we can accomplish great things together. We already have."

This follows an announcement this morning that Microsoft would be cutting 18,000 jobs company-wide. 

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    July 17, 2014 11:20 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Xbox Entertainment Studios being closed.

    Halo shows and Atari documentary still moving forward

    • reply
      July 17, 2014 11:34 AM

      well that didn't take long..

    • reply
      July 17, 2014 11:46 AM

      So when does MS announce the sale of the whole Xbox division?

      • reply
        July 17, 2014 11:51 AM

        never?

        what did xbox do to you, anyway? did it touch you? show me where.

      • reply
        July 17, 2014 12:06 PM

        I don't think that is the take-away from this - I think it is kind of smart really because the whole TV thing is fairly tangent to the console, especially when they didn't really seem to have anything new to bring to the entertainment landscape. Xbox One does a great job of integrating all the disparate providers; I think they should focus more on that.

      • reply
        July 17, 2014 12:28 PM

        what are you talking about? This was closing the division that makes XBox TV shows. I don't know how anyone couldn't see that coming from the day it was announced.

    • reply
      July 17, 2014 12:31 PM

      when they announced tv shows for only xbox I was way skeptical. how much money can you really put into a show that is viewed by a xbox userbase

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      July 17, 2014 12:58 PM

      Hahaha. What a shit show. Microsoft fucked this up last generation when they promised a bunch of community interaction through Live. The best we got were really dumb hint videos and the short lives 1 v 100

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      July 17, 2014 3:41 PM

      So I watched this video:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xookjtkAYsM

      and while is a bit old, it really gave me a bad vibe of where they were/are taking the console.
      this was before you could watch netflix and hulu w/out xbx live gold.



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