Xbox Sport Studios head Alan Hartman is retiring on the finish of subsequent month, and Uncommon head Craig Duncan is seemingly set to take his place.
That is based on a GamesIndustry.biz article, which cites an inner electronic mail despatched to Xbox employees by studio boss Matt Booty. In that electronic mail, Booty celebrates Hartman’s “innovation, dedication, and…unwavering ardour for gaming”.
As he factors out, Hartman’s profession with Microsoft started as a contractor in 1988, and he would go on to work on franchises like Age of Empires and Freelancer, in addition to being included within the credit of video games like Halo and Sea of Thieves.
Hartman was additionally concerned within the founding of Forza developer Flip 10, which was established again in 2001 to steward the racing franchise.
He would go on to change into Flip 10’s studio supervisor in 2005, a place through which he served all the best way up till 2023, when he was made the top of Xbox Sport Studios (rebranded from Microsoft Studios again in 2019) after former place holder Matt Booty was promoted.
All informed, this implies Hartman can have served as Xbox Sport Studios head for simply over a yr on the level of his retirement, which is not a foul innings.
Hartman’s substitute, Craig Duncan, is the present studio head of Microsoft subsidiary Uncommon, a place he is held since 2011. His appointment makes quite a lot of sense provided that Uncommon is a Microsoft studio, in addition to the persevering with success of Uncommon’s live-service sport Sea of Thieves.
Whether or not Duncan’s appointment will end in any type of concrete change when it comes to Xbox Sport Studios’ technique stays to be seen, however the label has quite a few video games on the horizon, together with the upcoming Fable reboot and Obsidian’s first-person RPG Avowed.
Duncan additionally inherits quite a few subsidiary studios underneath the Xbox label, together with Psychonauts developer Double Positive, Forza and Fable studio Playground Video games, and Hartman’s former stomping floor Flip 10.
