Last year, Microsoft made a major shake-up of the Xbox division and made Sarah Bond the new Xbox boss while Phil Spencer was given overall responsibility for all gaming efforts at Microsoft, where another big news was that Xbox Game Studios manager Matt Booty was promoted to president of game content and studios and succeeded by Alan Hartman.
However, Alan Hartman has now gone into retirement and a new head of Xbox Game Studios is needed, and one has now been appointed. It turns out that it will be a European who gets the honor this time, namely Rare’s studio head Craig Duncan.
Given the incredible success Rare has achieved with Sea of Thieves over the years, and most recently the success of the PlayStation 5 launch of the game, this feels extremely well-deserved and goes to a person of high trust. In a letter to Xbox division employees, Matt Booty writes (via The Verge):
“I am pleased to announce that Craig Duncan will assume the role of Head of Xbox Game Studios. Craig brings a wealth of experience from his tenure at Codemasters, Midway Games, and Sumo Digital before joining Xbox in 2011 to lead Rare. During this time, Rare has achieved sustained business success and developed new IP, most notably the ever-evolving Sea of Thieves, a cross-platform franchise with over 40 million players.
In his new role, Craig will continue to focus on helping our studios deliver high-quality, differentiated game experiences that can grow into successful franchises and reach more players by investing in new IP.”
The new leadership at Rare will be shared by Joe Neate and veteran Jim Horth, the former being a familiar name to many Sea of Thieves players who have followed the game for a long time.
We look forward to seeing what this will mean for both Rare and Xbox Game Studios. We know that the first one is currently working on Everwild, which we earlier today reported seems to be ready to be showcased reasonably soon, and hope that the latter run by Craig will finally give the green light to the long-awaited Banjo-Kazooie 3 that fans have been clamoring for over two decades.