Xbox boss Phil Spencer has personally apologised for the failure of Arkane’s Redfall, which was widely panned this week…
Xbox boss Phil Spencer has personally apologised for the failure of Arkane’s Redfall, which was widely panned this week.
The triple-A first-party shooter has suffered a disastrous launch, with players and reviewers criticising everything from the blandness of its world to the many bugs, its uninspired looter shooter mechanics to performance issues. It is Arkane’s worst-reviewed game, and has a « mostly negative » user review rating on Steam.
The failure of Redfall has also brought into question Microsoft’s ability to launch high-quality games with any regularity after a string of high-profile flops, and has caused some to cancel their Game Pass subscription between now and the upcoming launch of Bethesda’s Starfield in September.
In a sweeping video interview with Kinda Funny Games, below, Spencer takes responsibility for Redfall, saying: « I’m upset with myself. »
Promising Microsoft will revisit its development processes in the wake of Redfall’s launch, Spencer pointed to the news that Redfall would run at 30fps on console at launch when gameplay had suggested it would run at 60fps. (Spencer admits Microsoft knew Redfall would run at 30fps on console at launch when the misleading gameplay was released.)
« I’ll just say all up, there’s nothing that’s more difficult for me than disappointing the Xbox community. I’ve been a part of it for a long time. I obviously work on Xbox, head of the business, have a lot of friends, get a lot of feedback. And just to watch the community lose confidence, be disappointed, I’m disappointed. I’m upset with myself. I revisit our process – I think back to the announcement of 60fps and then we weren’t shipping 60fps, that was our punch in the chin, rightfully, a couple of weeks ago. And then seeing the game come out and the critical response was not what we wanted, and it’s disappointing.
« What can we learn? What can we get better? One thing I’ll fight is what went wrong. There’s clearly quality and execution things we can do, but one thing I won’t do is push against creative aspirations of our teams. Then a lot of people will say, hey, you’ve got teams, teams know how to do one kind of game, just force them to go do the one kind of game they have a proven track record for. I’m just not a believer in that.
« Maybe that means I’ll under deliver for some of our fans out there. But when a team like Rare wants to do Sea of Thieves, when a team like Obsidian wants to do Grounded, when Tango wants to go do Hi-Fi when everybody probably thought they were doing The Evil Within 3, I want to give the teams the creative platform to go and push their ability, push their aspirations.
« But I also need to have a great selection of games that continue to come that surprise and delight our fans. We under-delivered on that and for that I apologise. It’s not what I expect, not what I want. But it’s ours to deliver. »
« If I think about a team’s execution on a game, we had a creative vision and did we realise that vision through the game we created? That’s not a delay question if the answer is no. This isn’t a Redfall specific conversation. But we will build games that review in the high 80s, and we will build games that review in the 60s. It’s part of being in game publishing, and if you’re afraid of that, then you shouldn’t be in the entertainment business, you shouldn’t be in the games business.
« That said, every time we deliver something below our own internal expectations, that surprises us, we should check our process.
« I don’t look at the review scores on Redfall – there are quality issues and we’re working on those – but I think there’s a fundamental piece of feedback that we get that the game isn’t realising the creative vision it had for its players. That doesn’t feel like a hey, just delay it.
