Former Tomb Raider studio head joins Xbox in executive leadership role

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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.

Keep an eye on WindowsCentral.com/Gaming for all the latest in Xbox and Windows 10 gaming, accessories, news, and reviews!

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.
4 Comments
  • "And finally our biggest announcement yet...We hired this guy!"
  • "This could be the beginnings of Microsoft investing more in quality first-party games." Not really a gamer, but speaking as a developer I applaud ANY effort by MS to start at least pretending they are a SOFTWARE company again - its name is Micro SOFT after all - and start actually writing software instead of just purchasing startups that are doing great work and then killing them off. I hope this bleeds into the productivity side of MS. Some quality "first-party" personal finance apps would be great to see on the MS Store. And fixing bloody Skype, to make it competitive with Voxer, Viber, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp would be about bloody time! Seriously? Do they even remember what its like to write an app from scratch, and not just buy their way through life?
  • Good. Just bring in the Play Anywhere titles.
  • "Over the past few years, Microsoft hasn't released quality first-party games" WTF are you talking about? When this article was written both, Forza 6 & Forza: Horizon 3 were released less than 6 months ago and a year and a half ago respectively. Both well done and receiving the highest ratings, top of their genre this generation, and better than anything produced by Sony first party studios. Now, if you meant new IP or a constant flow of first-party games than sure Microsoft has been a little dry on that front with only a short list first party games arriving. But, going out and saying the past few years they have not released a quality first-party game is patently false.