Former Tomb Raider studio head joins Xbox in executive leadership role

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.

I'm thrilled to welcome Darrell Gallagher @DGallagher_LA to the Microsoft Studios executive leadership team. Excited to share more at E3.

— Matt Booty (@mattbooty) April 16, 2018

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.

• See Rise of the Tomb Raider at Amazon
• See Rise of the Tomb Raider at Microsoft Store
• See Rise of the Tomb Raider at Green Man Gaming

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