Over the years, Microsoft has substantially grown the size of its Xbox Game Studios publishing wing, with the firm now overseeing over 30 game development teams as they update existing titles and work on upcoming projects.

Given how many studios there are and how different their specializations are, too, many assume that they operate under Xbox within their own cordoned-off bubbles and don't interact much. According to Xbox's recently promoted chief content officer Matt Booty, however, that's actually not the case at all.

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Some other examples Booty mentioned include South of Midnight dev Compulsion Games making use of Activision's Mo Cap studio, Sea of Thieves creator Rare helping with Double Fine's imminent pottery brawler Kiln, narrative tools shared between RPG developers, and in-game shop tech coming from Minecraft to Microsoft Flight Simulator to Starfield.

Gears of War's The Coalition is also doing work with the Unreal Engine that's benefitting several Xbox studios, and Booty says those efforts are at the core of the "XGTG" — a team called the Xbox Games Technology Group that "has the center of excellence around Unreal Engine work."

"That is the group that really has the center of excellence around Unreal Engine work and then takes that out and makes it available to the other studios," he explained. "They're not brought in to work on the games and they're not a firefighting team. They are developing the technology but packaging it up in a way that it's very easy to hand off to the other studios."

All in all, it's very cool to hear that Xbox's various development teams are collaborating a lot with one another, and the news that the Blizzard Cinematics department is working on Fable is pretty exciting in particular, given how awesome WoW, Diablo, and Overwatch cinematics are. Here's hoping the "culture of cultures" continues to make development smoother for all of Xbox Game Studios.

Would you like to see Xbox Game Studios developers collaborate on games on a deeper level, and perhaps co-develop projects? Let me know in the comments, and vote in our poll.

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Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he's been an avid fan since childhood. He's been writing for Team WC since the summer of 2017, and you'll find him doing news, editorials, reviews, and general coverage on everything gaming, Xbox, and Windows PC. His favorite game of all time is probably NieR: Automata, though Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas, and Team Fortress 2 are in the running, too. When he's not writing or gaming, there's a good chance he's either watching an interesting new movie or TV show or actually going outside for once. Follow him on X (Twitter).