Phil Spencer Apologises for Redfall – Commits to Improving The Game

Xbox head Phil Spencer has apologised for the disappointing launch of Redfall, the latest vampire action game from Dishonored developer Arkane Studios. The game released earlier this week to mostly mixed and negative reviews, with many calling out its unfinished state, numerous bugs and underwhelming gameplay. Spencer has now committed to fixing Redfall‘s issues and bringing it up to a state that’s acceptable for players..

Speaking in a recent interview with Kinda Funny Games, Spencer talked about Redfall‘s launch and how it failed to meet the expectations of Xbox players. He added that the team expected better reviews after hosting internal “mock” reviews, which gave them a misguided sense of the game’s state and actual reception. Saying what everyone was thinking, Spencer also stated that delaying the game any further wouldn’t have solved its biggest issues.

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Spencer talked in great length about the reception of Redfall and took the brunt of blame for the final product:

“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, 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.”

Spencer went on to talk about the internal mock reviews and how it failed to accurately assess the outcome and damage, saying “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.”

Another delay for Redfall was off the table as Spencer realised that the game’s problems couldn’t have simply been fixed with more time as criticism was aimed at its creative core:

“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. 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.”

Spencer noted that Arkane Austin, the team behind the game, will commit to fixing it as best as it can in the coming months:

“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. 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.”

The full interview is quite extensive with Phil Spencer addressing more of the community’s concerns. You can watch it below:

Source: Kinda Funny Games