Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Microsoft Opens Xbox Studio In Los Angeles

Santa Monica has just gotten yet another boost in its bid to become the capital of Silicon Beach, as Microsoft said this week that it is opening up a new, 125-person strong entertainment studio in the city as part of an effort to create interactive content for the Xbox. The announcement, which was made Monday at the AllThingsD conference, will create original interactive content, live events and streaming, and more for Xbox. Microsoft said the production studio will employ 125, and plans to roll out its first content later this year. Los Angeles has benefited enormously from the move by technology giants into the business of financing and creating content for online video; those efforts include a big effort by Amazon, via Amazon Studios, to develop and find content for Amazon Prime Video; an entire studio, YouTube Space LA being run by YouTube to help create content for the video sharing site; not to mention countless startups developing online content from a number of online video streaming services.

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