It looks like a dream team of intellectuals all working on the next big thing might be harder to make succeed than Microsoft first expected. They have finally closed the doors on Pioneer Studios where one J Allard worked on Xbox, Zune and other consumer electronics and gadgets.
The test be was supposed to crank out gen ius products but in the end the ideas were bigger than their capabilities and apparently they were never able to come out with any usable products other than improvements to existing lines such as the Zune and Xbox Experience.
Anyone looking for space in Redmond?
Microsoft shutters Pioneer Studios, we pour one out for J Allard
By Amar Toor posted May 20th 2011 5:28AM
It’s been about a year since he left Microsoft, but the J Allard era came to a more definitive close yesterday, with the shuttering of his brainchild, Pioneer Studios. Microsoft opened the incubation lab more than three years ago as an entrepreneurial space where designers could toy around with new consumer technologies. The tragically shelved Courier tablet was first developed within Pioneer’s exposed brick walls, where Allard and his Alchemy Ventures team also worked on the Xbox, Zune and Windows Phone 7.
