Microsoft’s Project Spark to be discontinued in August

Ambitious content creation tool Project Spark is to shut down later this year.

Microsoft launched the Xbox One and PC title in early 2014, having originally announced the Team Dakota-developed service ahead of the Xbox One’s launch at E3 2013.

Initially supported by in-game purchases, Project Spark later transitioned to a free-to-play model last year. An episodic campaign starring Rare’s Conker the Squirrel was released in April 2015.

Writing on the Project Spark forums, community manager Thomas Gratz announced that the service would be halted on August 12th.

Users will need to save their creations before that date in order to access content offline.

Those who purchased Project Spark’s starter kit at retail after October 5th 2015 will be granted credit for the Xbox or Windows store.

“This was an extremely difficult decision for our team that we do not take lightly,” said Gratz.

“When Project Spark transitioned away from active development last fall, many of our team members moved to other projects within Microsoft Studios.

“While this means there have been no layoffs at Microsoft, it also means it’s simply no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping Project Spark up and running with meaningful updates and bug fixes, so we have come to this hard decision.”