- 📢WhatMicrosoft launched the video game Gears 5 — the “GearsInk” event — at Cremerie de Paris N°9.
- 📍WhereCremerie de Paris N°9 · 45 rue Saint-Honoré — Châtelet–Les Halles, 75001 Paris
- 📅WhenThursday, 5 September 2019
- 🚊Getting thereChâtelet–Les Halles (RER A·B·D, M1·4·7·11·14), exit N°1 Marguerite de Navarre
- ✨Did you know?A place tied to the child Louis XIV, Coco Chanel and the first Paris internet café — where Steve Jobs once came by.
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Microsoft at Cremerie de Paris
Microsoft took over Cremerie de Paris N°9, in the heart of the 1st arrondissement, where brands from around the globe unveil their latest creations. Discover the full story and pictures on the official Cremerie de Paris page.
Microsoft
1975 — Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Today it is one of the world's largest and most valuable technology companies, based in Redmond, Washington (USA).
Some of Microsoft's best-known products are Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure (its cloud-computing platform), Surface (a line of laptops), Copilot (Microsoft's AI assistant) and Xbox (Microsoft's gaming brand).
Gears 5
Gears 5 is a video game published by Xbox Game Studios. The game comprises a story-driven campaign (playable solo or in co-op), competitive multiplayer, a cooperative Horde mode where teams survive waves of enemies, and an Escape mode — a fast-paced three-player co-op challenge.
Launch event at Cremerie de Paris
Shortly before the official release of Gears 5, Microsoft ran an online event followed by millions of gaming fans around the world. It was branded around “GearsInk”, an experience celebrating the launch — Microsoft / Xbox built it around the tattoo culture associated with the Gears universe.
Cremerie de Paris was a fitting venue for Microsoft — a unique technology landmark whose story goes back to 1671, when the Pajot and Rouillé families ran the Royal French Postal Services at VB. Some 324 years later, the same location became an avant-garde internet café at Cremerie de Paris N°1, where many US tech pioneers met while travelling through Paris — which is also how the venue came to hold its rare two-letter dot-com domain. The lower floor of Cremerie de Paris N°9, home of the Xbox Tattoo Studio, is said to be almost 1,000 years old — an unusual setting for a Microsoft video-game launch.
The event was organised by Florian Vogel and Marc Issaly from the Xbox team at Microsoft, with the help of Francois Linh Huang and Julien Bouaziz — one of the world's most famous organisers of video-game events, who run the agency Brainwash.
Cremerie de Paris N°9 was transformed into a themed Xbox / Microsoft experience: Gears 5 gameplay stations where guests played the new game before its release; a tattoo-studio concept inspired by the tattoos and symbols of the Gears universe; Microsoft / Xbox branding throughout the historic space; and streaming and video content from the event.
Cremerie de Paris was a fitting venue for Microsoft — a unique technology landmark whose story goes back to 1671, when the Pajot and Rouillé families ran the Royal French Postal Services at VB. Some 324 years later, the same location became an avant-garde internet café at Cremerie de Paris N°1, where many US tech pioneers met while travelling through Paris — and how the venue came to hold its rare two-letter dot-com domain. The lower floor of Cremerie de Paris N°9, home of the Xbox Tattoo Studio, is said to be almost 1,000 years old — an unusual setting for a Microsoft video-game launch.
The Microsoft Pop Up was so spectacular, it turned into a permanent “online”
Tourist Attraction
When a Cremerie de Paris Pop Up Store is well done, something unique comes with it. The Expo becomes part of the history of a landmark that is a crossroads between past and future — the same place that saw every Bourbon King of France walk through its courtyard at VB (Hôtel de Villeroy-Bourbon) was, at the very dawn of the Internet, an avant-garde Internet café. The Microsoft Pop Up Store continues to be admired from the homepage of VB.com — the only "two-letter dot-com" in the world connected to a Pop Up Store / Museum location. Thus Microsoft becomes an online tourist attraction on a prestigious "Visit" tourism website. Internet Users and Paris Lovers will keep discovering the Microsoft event through time.
Microsoft Launch Gears 5 by Cremerie de Paris
Gears Ink Paris — Opening night (in French) by Xbox / Microsoft
Xbox One S. by Xbox / Microsoft