Redfall is certainly the biggest game from Xbox studios to have seen the light of day in the first half of this year. But it’s also the biggest disappointment of the year for Xbox to date, with a very mixed critical reception.
Execution of Redfall’s creative vision questioned
Phil Spencer was asked about the launch of Redfall on the recent Kinda Funny Games podcast, the video of which you can find below. Without being an ostrich, the boss of Xbox admits that there have been misses.
There’s nothing harder for me than disappointing the Xbox community. I was part of it for quite a while and I work at Xbox as a business manager. I have a lot of friends, I get a lot of feedback… And seeing the community lose confidence and be disappointed…
I’m disappointed, I’m angry with myself… I’m thinking of reviewing our processes, I’m thinking of the announcement of 60 frames per second followed by the announcement that we won’t reach 60 frames per second, it’s was like a punch in the chin.
And then the game came out and the critical response wasn’t what we wanted. It’s disappointing. But I take myself in hand. What can we learn from this and how can we do better?
Phil Spencer then adds that there are also elements around quality and execution that will probably have to be looked at closely. On the other hand, he refuses to penalize his teams.
One thing I won’t do is go against the creative aspirations of our teams.
He’s referring here to the fact that Redfall was developed by Arkane Austin, a studio that hasn’t been used to releasing multiplayer games. Phil Spencer specifies that he wishes to leave the freedom to the teams to go towards other genres and towards games for which they are not necessarily expected. He takes as an example the successes that are Sea of Thieves from Rare, Grounded from Obsidian or recently Hi-Fi RUSH from Tango Gameworks.
Phil Spencer admits that it is still necessary to deliver quality games regularly, and apologizes for the failure of Redfall.
To the question of how Xbox manages the releases of its games and how the balance is made between releasing a technically unsuccessful game or postponing it, Phil Spencer also provides an answer. He explains that the goal is first to respect the creative vision that was imagined for the game. And according to him, Redfall did not arrive there. For the head of Xbox, the question around Redfall therefore does not really revolve around a postponement that the game should have undergone, but rather around the creative direction of the game and its accomplishment. “Do we have enough creative differentiation in our basic idea and have we achieved this creative ambition? »
