Xbox Sport Studios has a brand new head as of immediately, with former Uncommon studio head Craig Duncan taking on the function – however who’s he, anyhow?
The Verge reported immediately that present Xbox Sport Studios head Alan Hartman is retiring after greater than 30 years on the firm this coming November. Hartman had solely taken over the function final 12 months after earlier head Matt Booty had been promoted to president of sport content material and studios. Now taking on the function is Craig Duncan, who has been the studio head at Sea of Thieves and Banjo Kazooie developer Uncommon since 2011. Taking up his place are Joe Neate and Jim Horth as co-leaders, whereas Uncommon continues its work on Sea of Thieves and Everwild.
“In his new function, Craig will proceed to concentrate on serving to our studios ship high-quality, differentiated sport experiences that may develop into profitable franchises and attain extra gamers by investing in new IP,” Booty mentioned of Hartman: “Alan’s profession has been marked by innovation, dedication, and an unwavering ardour for gaming… His work to advance accessibility in gaming has set a benchmark for the business and underneath his management, Xbox Sport Studios has shipped a number of critically acclaimed titles this 12 months and set the stage for extremely anticipated video games like Avowed, South of Midnight, Fable, and extra.”
Duncan has had a severely prolonged profession within the video games business, having labored on titles like Colin McRae whereas at Codemasters, in addition to different video games akin to Clive Barker’s Jericho and Overlord on the identical studio. In a while he labored on titles like Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing and Lifeless Area Ignition at Sumo Digital, earlier than ultimately taking on as studio head at Uncommon, a developer with an enormous variety of titles underneath its belt, however clearly greatest recognized nowadays for Sea of Thieves, which Duncan additionally oversaw after all.
It is fairly the leap from studio head to Xbox Sport Studios head, however Uncommon actually is one among Microsoft’s stronger studios nowadays, even when we have not actually heard something about Everwild shortly. The transfer can also be simply the most recent large change Microsoft has been going by means of – after a 12 months of going again on forth on whether or not its video games might be obtainable on PS5 (a few of them have and a few quickly will), and a push into cell, Xbox may look fairly completely different in a 12 months’s time.