Microsoft has hired Elan Lee to help in its effort to connect Xbox One with TV entertainment.
Lee has been taken on as chief design officer at Xbox Entertainment Studios, the new Microsoft unit tasked with shoring up its TV entertainment push. Elan will report to the XES head Nancy Tellem, who was formerly president of CBS Television Studios.
Lee worked at Microsoft Game Studios back in the 1990s before moving into designing large-scale human interaction games, sometimes called Alternate Reality Games, such as The Beast and Halo 2 promotional game I Love Bees. More recently he formed Fourth Wall Studios, which created interactive TV comedy Dirty Work.
Nancy Tellem appeared at the Xbox One launch in Redmond last month to unveil plans for a collaboration with Steven Spielberg to create a new TV series based on Halo. Earlier this year, she spoke at a panel on the future of TV and games consoles, saying that she had assembled a team of 150 people to create original TV programming for Xbox One, including reality, scripted drama and live events, but with an interactive twist.
The importance Microsoft places in this effort can also be gauged by its repeated references to Xbox One's relationships with the television at that event in May. Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer and Tellem were reported to have met with Hollywood executives earlier this month.