Xbox Game Studios has a new head as of today, with former Rare studio head Craig Duncan taking over the role – but who is he, anyhow?
The Verge reported today that current Xbox Game Studios head Alan Hartman is retiring after more than 30 years at the company this coming November. Hartman had only taken over the role last year after previous head Matt Booty had been promoted to president of game content and studios. Now taking over the role is Craig Duncan, who has been the studio head at Sea of Thieves and Banjo Kazooie developer Rare since 2011. Taking over his position are Joe Neate and Jim Horth as co-leaders, while Rare continues its work on Sea of Thieves and Everwild.
“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,” Booty said of Hartman: “Alan’s career has been marked by innovation, dedication, and an unwavering passion for gaming… His work to advance accessibility in gaming has set a benchmark for the industry and under his leadership, Xbox Game Studios has shipped multiple critically acclaimed titles this year and set the stage for highly anticipated games like Avowed, South of Midnight, Fable, and more.”
Duncan has had a seriously lengthy career in the games industry, having worked on titles like Colin McRae while at Codemasters, as well as other games such as Clive Barker’s Jericho and Overlord at the same studio. Later on he worked on titles like Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing and Dead Space Ignition at Sumo Digital, before eventually taking over as studio head at Rare, a developer with a huge number of titles under its belt, but obviously best known these days for Sea of Thieves, which Duncan also oversaw of course.
It’s quite the leap from studio head to Xbox Game Studios head, but Rare really is one of Microsoft’s stronger studios these days, even if we haven’t really heard anything about Everwild in a while. The move is also just the latest big change Microsoft has been going through – after a year of going back on forth on whether its games will be available on PS5 (some of them have and some soon will), and a push into mobile, Xbox might look quite different in a year’s time.