It’s safe to say at this point that the recently released Redfall has turned out an unambiguous flop. Having underperformed both in its critical response and its current player count, Redfall has not managed to capture the attention of players in the way that Arkane, Bethesda, and Microsoft had hoped. Now that a few days of negative press and attention have passed, Xbox Game Studios CEO Phil Spencer has spoken out about Redfall’s subpar launch. Showing up as a guest on the Kinda Funny Xcast, Spencer spoke quite candidly about the launch and the mistakes that he and Xbox as a whole had made.
During the show, Spencer said that he felt “upset with [him]self” over disappointing Xbox’s playerbase. He specifically recounted the handling of the console version’s 30 fps framerate cap at launch, which contrasted with pre-release footage showing the title running at a currently unavailable 60 fps setting. Spencer aims to learn lessons from the launch and explore what Xbox can do better with future exclusives.
A harsh learning experience
Spencer went on to state that he will not interfere with the “creative aspirations of our teams,” especially since Arkane still has an overall solid track record of releases. Ultimately, though, he acknowledged that Arkane did not meet its goals with the launch of Redfall, saying that core problems would not have been solved through a simple three-month delay.
Even after everything that has happened, though, the developers still plan on continuing their support for Redfall. They still intend on delivering the promised 60 fps performance mode in the near future, and they have more plans beyond that. The Xbox CEO noted that since Redfall costs $70 USD, he will “take full responsibility for launching a game that needs to be great.” In the end, we can only wait and see if Arkane and Xbox manage to turn this around.
