Craig Duncan, head of Xbox Game Studios, and Louise O’Connor, the division’s chief of staff, are both departing Microsoft – marking the third leadership change atop Xbox‘s internal studios in roughly two years and leaving a portfolio that includes Halo, Forza, Fable, Gears, Obsidian, Ninja Theory, Double Fine, and more without a confirmed successor, as reported by IGN.
Here’s the context: Duncan spent nearly 14 years running Rare before being promoted to head of Xbox Game Studios in late 2024, succeeding Alan Hartman following a broader Xbox reorg tied to the fallout from the Activision Blizzard acquisition and roughly 1,900 gaming job cuts earlier that year. O’Connor, also a Rare veteran, joined as chief of staff in 2025 to help Duncan manage what is one of the largest first-party studio portfolios in the industry. Both brought deep live-service and UK studio management expertise – the kind built running Sea of Thieves over a decade – and that institutional knowledge now exits simultaneously. With Duncan gone, all Xbox Game Studios teams report directly to Matt Booty, who shifted into a new Chief Content Officer role earlier in 2026 as part of a restructuring that elevated Asha Sharma over the broader gaming business. As we covered in our breakdown of Microsoft’s Xbox spin-off discussions, the structural uncertainty at the top of Xbox runs deeper than any single personnel move.
Honestly, this is not an isolated departure – it is the latest data point in a deliberate consolidation strategy. Sharma‘s mandate, as framed by multiple outlets, is to rein in an overextended studio slate and hold first-party output to stricter performance and profitability standards. Losing Duncan and O’Connor just ahead of what Bloomberg describes as another significant round of post–June 30 layoffs – following approximately 9,000 company-wide cuts in mid-2025 – suggests these were not voluntary exits timed poorly. It suggests that the executives overseeing the studios being evaluated for cuts and closures are no longer the right fit for what comes next. As we detailed in our coverage of closure talks at Double Fine, Ninja Theory, and Compulsion, studios directly under Duncan‘s remit have already been in internal survival negotiations. Centralising oversight under Booty while that process plays out is not a transitional measure – it is the restructuring itself, running in real time.
What remains unclear is who Microsoft intends to appoint as the next head of Xbox Game Studios, and whether that role will carry the same scope Duncan held or will be folded further into Booty‘s consolidated content structure. Equally unconfirmed is how the leadership gap affects active projects – Fable, the next Halo, Gears under The Coalition, Avowed‘s ongoing support, and the pipeline at studios like inXile and Undead Labs all operated under Duncan‘s oversight. What to watch: the post–June 30 period, when the reported layoffs and any associated project cancellations are expected to surface. A successor appointment before that window would signal Microsoft intends to maintain the division’s current structure; no appointment would confirm that Booty is simply absorbing the role permanently as part of a leaner content organisation. Xbox‘s hiring of outside strategic talent – as covered in our piece on the Matthew Ball hire – points toward a leadership team being rebuilt from scratch around a narrower set of priorities.
Does the simultaneous loss of both Duncan and O’Connor give you any confidence in the direction of specific franchises they oversaw – or does it raise genuine concern for in-development projects at studios like Obsidian, Ninja Theory, or The Coalition? And does the third leadership change in two years at the top of Xbox Game Studios suggest a division that is still finding its footing, or one that is deliberately being remade into something fundamentally smaller? Sound off in the comments below, and keep your eyes on GameLuster for more Xbox and Xbox Game Studios coverage.
