Microsoft Locks Up The Guild

Felicia Day, creator of web series The Guild, said during her talk at NewTeeVee Live that she had some major sponsorship on news on the way. Looks like it’s a bit more than just that: The Hollywood Reporter writes that Microsoft has nabbed the exclusive rights to the second season of the series and will show it across the Xbox, MSN and Zune platforms.

Sprint will sponsor all 12 episodes of the season across the three Microsoft outlets and will have commercials attached as well as product placements within the show.

Day told us earlier this month that she rejected about 25 offers to sponsor the geek-friendly comedy, saying, “For me, an important part of the show is that I retain the rights to the show.” Her deal with the Redmond giant lets her keep the intellectual property rights to The Guild while collecting an up-front fee. This means that should The Guild follow in the footsteps of Sanctuary (another series where the creator held on to the IP) and move to TV, Microsoft won’t participate in any revenues generated from that.

New episodes will run on Microsoft properties for the first month and then move to the series’ home at watchtheguild.com, where Microsoft will continue to retain ad revenue generated. Also, new episodes will run day-and-date in 9 languages in 26 different countries that have Xbox Live.

Microsoft is not messing around when it comes to adding video content to the Xbox. It launched its line of original horror series this fall and just last week added Netflix streaming to the service. And Day is turning into quite the new media mogul herself, she’s got a deal to produce another gamer-related series for Machinima.com.