Microsoft Closes Down Xbox Entertainment Studios

We’ve been talking about Crytek’s problems as of late, but they’re not the only company having some woes at the moment: another company with a hand in the gaming pot, Microsoft, recently purchased  Nokia Devices and Services and 250,000 of their employees for 7.2 billion dollars.  And following the wake of that purchase, they announced that they’re going to lay off an unprecedented 13,000 employees from its staff—making it the largest number of simultaneous job cuts in the company’s history.

Interesting, but why talk about it on a gaming website?  Well, I’ll tell you.  Of those 13,000 employees, roughly 12,500 are being cut from the newly-acquired Nokia Devices and Services staff.   But that leaves 500 jobs within Microsoft itself on the chopping block: and 200 of those 500 jobs are coming out of Xbox Entertainment Studios.

Xbox Entertainment Studios was a short-lived effort by Microsoft to provide exclusive viewing content for Xbox users, called Xbox Originals.  It aired things like “Every Street United”, and was in the process of developing a game based off the acclaimed RPG Deadlands and a highly-anticipated Halo TV series, which was to be produced by Steven Spielberg.

According to a leaked internal memo from Phil Spencer, the ongoing “Every Street united” series and the Halo series will still be happening—but there were no specifics on how.  Or if the Deadlands series would ever see the light of day.  I’ve included the whole memo below for you to look at.

All in all, surprising and sad to see this plan come to an end.  I’m not very surprised, mind, it seems like the studio is a casualty of Microsoft’s ill-fated attempt to turn the Xbox One into an all-in-one entertainment package, but still, they were going to make some neat things.

In last week's mail outlining some of the steps towards creating the culture and organization to bring our ambitions to life, Satya called out the strategic importance of Xbox as a strong consumer brand, a creative center for gaming and a leader in bold innovation. Every member of Team Xbox should be incredibly proud of the impact and reach your work has within the walls of Microsoft, with our developer community and most importantly, with consumers.

Microsoft is the productivity and platform company for a mobile-first and cloud-first world, and games are the single biggest digital life category in a mobile-first world. Success in this category, by growing a robust Xbox business, brings additional value to Microsoft. I have stated this before, but for Xbox to be successful, we must remain committed to being a consumer-driven organization with the mission of meeting the high expectations of a passionate fan base, to create the best games and to drive technical innovation.

As part of the planned reduction to our overall workforce announced today and in light of our organization's mission, we plan to streamline a handful of portfolio and engineering development efforts across Xbox. One such plan is that, in the coming months, we expect to close Xbox Entertainment Studios. I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the accomplishments from the entire team in XES. They have built an impressive slate of original programming and pioneered interactive entertainment on Xbox, such as the innovative reality series 'Every Street United' that succeeded in uniting audiences around the globe during the recent World Cup. I am pleased that Nancy, Jordan and members of the XES team remain committed to new, original programming already in production like the upcoming documentary series 'Signal to Noise' whose first installment takes on the rise and fall of gaming icon Atari and of course, the upcoming game franchise series 'Halo: Nightfall,' and the 'Halo' Television series which will continue as planned with 343 Industries. Xbox will continue to support and deliver interactive sports content like 'NFL on Xbox,' and we will continue to enhance our entertainment offering on console by innovating the TV experience through the monthly console updates. Additionally, our app partnerships with world-class content providers bringing entertainment, sports and TV content to Xbox customers around the world are not impacted by this organizational change in any way and remain an important component of our Xbox strategy.

Change is never easy, but I believe the changes announced today help us better align with our long-term goals. 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.

Thank you again for all you do for Xbox.

Phil