Xbox head Phil Spencer said Arkane Studios will launch this week redfall is “disappointing”, but that the studio behind it is determined to keep working on it. Spencer, speaking at the Rather funny games Xcast On Thursday, he also took responsibility for launching a rough-and-tumble game at Xbox’s new $70 price point.
Spencer said that critical response to redfall was “significantly lower” than Microsoft’s internal ratings of the game – on Metacritic, the average review score is 59 out of 100. User reviews are much less positive.
“We do mock reviews for every game we launch, and this is down double digits from what we thought we would be with this game,” explained Spencer. “That’s one of the disappointing things; we would never aim to launch a game that we thought would be rated in the late 60’s – it’s not part of our goals. [Redfall] was significantly lower than our internal metrics in terms of where it was actually rated. But that’s up to no one but us. We have to make that our own.
Spencer said Microsoft and Arkane are taking that feedback to heart, pointing to other long-supported games from Xbox Game Studios as examples of capturing what’s wrong.
“In terms of our commitment to the game […], Arkane’s team is taking the short-term feedback,” he said. “We are still working on the 60fps [update]. We have a good timeline for that. We are determined to make that happen and we will keep working [on] the game. We’ve shown our commitment to games like Sea of thieves And grounded, to keep building games. But I also know that these games cost $70, and I’m going to take full responsibility for a game that’s supposed to be great.
In the end, Spencer said, “We let a lot of people down this week with the launch of the game, but we’ll keep pushing.”
Spencer also addressed a common question: why not procrastinate? redfall until it’s done? (The game was already significantly delayed in 2022.)
“There are quality issues and we’re working on that, but I think there’s a fundamental piece of feedback that the game isn’t realizing the creative vision it had for its players,” Spencer said. “That doesn’t feel like one Hey, put it off [situation]. That feels like the game had a purpose to do one thing and when players actually play they don’t feel that thing, that creative execution of the team.
“When a match has to be postponed – which we did with that Star fieldwhat we did with Halo [Infinite]what we did with redfall – because the production timeline says: We have this vision and our production timelines are not getting us to the completion of that visionwe slow down games.