While developer Rare might have been hit with a setback due to its long-in-development title Everwild recently getting cancelled, executive producer Louise O’Connor has been given greater power over the Xbox Game Studios division. According to VGC, O’Connor has now been appointed as the chief of staff for Xbox Game Studios as a whole.
O’Connor is a veteran of not only the gaming industry as a whole, but also of Rare itself, having worked with the studio for 25 years. She first started with the company while working on adult-comedy platforming game Conker’s Bad Fur Day for the Nintendo 64, which came out all the way back in 2001.
Interestingly, O’Connor is joining fellow Rare alumnus Craig Duncan, who had taken over from Alan Hartman as the head of Xbox Game Studios back in October 2024. The two former Rare employees now both have leadership roles over various development teams under the Xbox Game Studios banner, including The Coalition, Halo Studios, Double Fine, and Bethesda.
Rare’s last major in-development title was Everwild, which was confirmed to have been cancelled back in July as part of major lay-offs happening at Microsoft as a whole at the time. Along with the game getting cancelled, Rare itself was also slated to see some restructures, which in turn would result in more employees being let go from the studio.
In the meantime, the only major game Rare has ended up releasing for the last decade, aside from 2015’s compilation release Rare Replay, has been Sea of Thieves in 2018. In response to the cancellation of Everwild and other things happening at the studio, Rare announced a new approach to seasonal content in the multiplayer pirate game back in July.
Among the changes coming to how Sea of Thieves gets new content is the fact that seasonal content will be more spread out over the course of a season rather than being front-loaded with all of the content right from the get go. Along with this, the studio is also relaunching the Sea of Thieves Insider Programme to get the community involved in testing future content for the game.
With a three-month season taken into account, the first month of a fresh season of Sea of Thieves will get new sandbox features and worldbuilding setup for the story, which will in turn be continued with a headlining live event for the season in its second month. The third month of a season is slated to be a call-to-action for players that might be revisiting the title in a bid to revitalise the sandbox gameplay content.
Sea of Thieves has just started the second month of Season 17, being the first of the game’s seasons to follow the new structure. Season 17 brings with it the Smuggler’s League, as well as new content like smugglers’ hideouts and new loot types, as well as Smugglers’ Runs. Heists are also a major part of the season.
Sea of Thieves is available on PC, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
