Phil Spencer apologises for ‘disappointing’ Redfall and claims Xbox was expecting better reviews

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has apologised for the launch state of its latest big first-party release, Redfall, and claimed that developer Arkane Austin will work on improvements for the game.

The first major Xbox exclusive from Bethesda launched this week with a number of technical issues and has generally been reviewed poorly, garnering aggregate scores of 62 (Xbox Series X/S) and 58 (PC) on Metacritic.

At the time of publishing, the co-op shooter has user scores of just 2.6 and 1.9 out of ten.

Addressing Redfall‘s disappointing reception in a new interview with Kinda Funny Games, Microsoft‘s head of gaming claimed the platform holder did not expect such a negative reception to the game, citing internal mock reviews which allegedly suggested it could have received much higher scores.

He also suggested that delaying the game further – it was originally due out in 2022 – would not have solved its biggest issues.

“There’s nothing that’s more difficult for me than disappointing the Xbox community,” Spencer said. “I’ve been a part of it for a long time. I obviously work on Xbox, I’m head of the business, I have a lot of friends and get a lot of feedback, and just to kind of watch the community lose confidence, be disappointed, I’m disappointed, I’m upset with myself.”

He added: “We do mock reviews for every game that we launch, and this is double digits lower than where we thought we would be with this game through [those]. That’s one of the disappointing things: we would never strive to launch a game that we thought was going to review in the low 60s – it’s not part of our goals.

“If you look at our review scores over the past year – and this is not a defence at all – I think the teams have done a much better job in upping the level of quality of the games that we’ve shipped… and this game was significantly below our internal metrics compared to where it actually reviewed. But that’s not on anybody but us – we have to own that.”

Spencer was asked generally about how it decides whether a game should be delayed, and the exec said Xbox wouldn’t push a project back if it didn’t believe it could realise its creative vision as a result.

“There are quality issues and we’re working on those, but a fundamental piece of feedback I get [from Redfall reviews] is that the game isn’t realising the creative vision that it had for its players. That doesn’t fell like a, ‘hey, just delay it’, that feels like the game had a goal to do one thing and when players are actually playing they’re not feeling that,” he said.

“When a game needs to be delayed, like what we did with Starfield, Halo and Redfall, because the production timeline is saying, ‘we have this vision, and our production timeline don’t get us to the completion of that vision’, we do delay games.”

The exec went on to play down the number of technical issues in Redfall, instead claiming that the game’s poor reception was mostly because the development team didn’t hit its goals.

“Learning about the quality – and I know there are bugs, I’ve seen them in Redfall – when I look at the crash rates with the game, because we get all the telemetry for everything – it’s not out of proportion for a game that has just launched, it’s kind of in the pocket of what we’d expect. That’s not to deny any of the animation, streaming of texture bugs, or AI bugs – we will go and work on those.

“But when I look at the review scores of this game it’s [about] did we have enough creative differentiation in our core idea and did we realise that creative ambition? I’m a huge supporter of Arkane Austin: their track record is awesome, I love a lot of the great games that they’ve built. This is one where the team didn’t hit their own internal goals.

“I think it’s maybe a bit simplistic to say, ‘hey, maybe if you just delayed it three months, the core creative of the game would’ve delivered on something than what it was’.

“So I look at them in different camps. If there’s a production timeline issue, we’ve been open to delaying. If we just have more bugs than we should have at the end of a game, we’re open to delaying. At some point we do need to have a creative vision and put the game out and reviewers and players will tell us what they think.”

Spencer claimed that Bethesda and developer Arkane will continue to support Redfall, as Rare had done with Sea of Thieves – another first-party co-op title which was initially criticised at launch.

“In terms of our commitment to the game… absolutely, the team at Arkane is taking the near-term feedback. We’re still working on the 60fps update. We have a good timeline for that… and we’re going to continue to work [on] the game. We’ve shown a commitment to games like Sea of Thieves and [Obsidian‘s] Grounded, to continue to go and build games.

“But I also know that these games are $70, and I’m going to take full responsibility for launching a game that needs to be great,” he said. “We let a lot of people down this week with the launch of the game, but we will continue to strive on. You have to – that’s what creativity is about.”

Later in the interview, Spencer was asked to reflect on the lessons Xbox could take from Redfall and its launch state.

Spencer said he believes the platform holder should have done more early in the game’s development, in terms of providing assistance to Arkane and setting expectations for what a first-party game needs to deliver.

“When we acquire studios, there are games that are in development, and then there are things that are either really early in development or not even conceived yet. I think we need to improve in engaging with games that are mid-way through production when they become part of Xbox,” he said.

“I do think there’s a different expectation for a game and a team when you’ve been third-party and all of a sudden you become part of first-party. There’s a different expectation in terms of how you’re going to perform on our console, and I think there’s a different competitive set when people look at what this game is and… say, ‘hey, I want this game to feel as competitive as this other game on another console platform’.

“And we didn’t do a good job early on in engaging Arkane Austin to really help them understand what it meant to be part of Xbox and part of first-party, and use some of our internal resources to help them move along that journey even faster. We left them to work on the game… they’re a very talented team – I love that team, and I still do, and I will totally bet on them to do another great game.

“But when [Xbox Game Studios head] Matt Booty and [Zenimax president] Jamie Leder sit down, I think we can engage earlier with our different studios. And I do think there’s a difference when we come in when the creative is already set on a game – and that’s not washing our hands, every game we ship from our teams is an Xbox game, so we take full responsibility for it”.

Spencer said he believes the platform holder “did a better job” with Bethesda’s other 2023 release, the upcoming sci-fi RPG Starfield, in terms of assisting development, because the game was earlier in production when Xbox acquired it.

“We should’ve been there for [Redfall co-creative director] Harvey [Smith] and the team earlier – I think that’s on us,” he continued. “And then through the process, it’s an Unreal [Engine] game: we have a bunch of studios that have done some really great work on Unreal over the years, and I think we were too late to help in that when they had certain issues”.

Finally, Spencer said that, while there are clearly things that can be improved in Xbox Game Studios’ product delivery process, he won’t force development teams to stick to making the type of games they have a track record with.

Redfall is a vampire looter shooter, a genre that’s new to creator Arkane, which is known for its critically acclaimed immersive sim series Dishonored.

“I think back to the announcement of 60 frames per second, and then we weren’t shipping 60 frames per second… That was kind of our punch in the chin, rightfully, a couple of weeks ago.

“And then seeing the game come out, the critical response was not what we wanted. And it’s disappointing. So, I kind of picked myself up [and asked] what can we learn? How can we get better?

“One thing I’ll fight in what went wrong… There’s clearly quality and execution things that we can do, but one thing I won’t do is push against the creative aspirations of our teams. I know 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 that they have a proven track record’.

“And I’m just not a believer in that. Maybe that means I’ll underdeliver 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 Rush 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 and we underdelivered on that and for that I apologise. It’s not what I expect, not what I want, but you know, it’s ours to deliver.”