Former Tomb Raider studio head joins Xbox in executive leadership role

By Asher Madan
published

Darrell Gallagher, the former head of Crystal Dynamics and senior vice president at Activision, is joining Microsoft Studios in a new executive leadership role. Gallagher worked at Crystal Dynamics for almost a decade before leaving. His tenure at Activision only lasted a few years. The news was announced on Twitter by Matt Booty, the recently-appointed head of Microsoft Studios.

Gallagher is a veteran of the gaming industry and has worked at various levels of game development. He's best known for his involvement with the successful Tomb Raider reboot which gave the franchise a more mature and survival-focused tone. It's unclear what his new position at Microsoft Studios is but both Booty and Gallagher teased exciting news for E3 2018. This could be the beginnings of Microsoft investing more in quality first-party games.

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Ever since the new broke, numerous gamers have been speculating about what this could mean. Hopefully Microsoft will announce a new adventure game instead of simply stating who the company hired at E3. However, only time will tell.

Over the past few years, Microsoft hasn't released quality first-party games and even titles like Sea of Thieves were lacking content. On the other hand, Nintendo and Sony have published critical-accliamed games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and God of War. Microsoft has a long road ahead if it wants to match that level of quality, but hiring seasoned developers is a step in the right direction.

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Asher Madan
Asher Madan

Asher Madan handles gaming news for Windows Central. Before joining Windows Central in 2017, Asher worked for a number of different gaming outlets. He has a background in medical science and is passionate about all forms of entertainment, cooking, and antiquing.