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Microsoft has announced that it will be permanently closing all of its retail stores, while four physical locations in London, NYC, Sydney, and Redmond will be re-imagined as Microsoft Experience Centers.
Microsoft announced the news and said that "the company’s retail team members will continue to serve customers from Microsoft corporate facilities and remotely providing sales, training, and support."
Microsoft has told The Verge that no layoffs will result from today's decision. Microsoft closed its retail stores in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and had yet to re-open them.
Since then, their focus has obviously shifted to its digital storefronts on Microsoft.com and the stores on both Xbox and Windows PC, which "reach more than 1.2 billion people every month in 190 markets."
“We deliberately built teams with unique backgrounds and skills that could serve customers from anywhere. The evolution of our workforce ensured we could continue to serve customers of all sizes when they needed us most, working remotely these last months,” Microsoft Corporate Vice Pesident David Porter said in a statement. “Speaking over 120 languages, their diversity reflects the many communities we serve. Our commitment to growing and developing careers from this talent pool is stronger than ever.”
In April, Microsoft explained its plan to take care of its employees in this changed world we are living in, saying how many employees had already shifted to remote work and had how it had continued to "provide regular pay for team members through the pandemic."
This news arrives in the same year as the launch of Microsoft's newest console, the Xbox Series X, which is expected to be released in Holiday 2020.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.