The position of head of Xbox Game Studios, Microsoft's portfolio of first-party developers, is changing. Alan Hartman, who stepped into the role last year after Matt Booty became president of Game Content and Studios overseeing Xbox, Bethesda, and Activision Blizzard, is retiring. Before that, Hartman was the Studio Manager of Turn 10 for nearly twenty years, working on the acclaimed Forza and Forza Horizon franchises.
Announcing the news, Matt Booty sent the following email (shared publicly by GamesIndustry) to employees:
Alan's career has been marked by innovation, dedication, and an unwavering passion for gaming. Starting as a contractor at Microsoft in the fledgling CD-ROM group in 1988, Alan has worked on a variety of projects in his time here, from Age of Empires to Brute Force as the studio head of Digital Anvil to the founding of Turn 10. Over the years, Alan, Turn 10 and Playground Games delivered 13 Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon games, building Forza into one of the top racing franchises in the world and regularly pushing the capabilities of our hardware. 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.
The new head of Xbox Game Studios will be Craig Duncan, who's filled the position of Studio Manager at Rare since March 2011. Booty said:
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.
In turn, Craig Duncan is being replaced at Rare by Joe Neate, who produced Sea of Thieves, and Jim Horth. Earlier today, we also reported an unrelated rumor that the Everwild team is finally making good progress, having found a solid gameplay loop after many tries.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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