Tweet
Blame Phil. Really, he said it's ok to blame him. For what? For the overwhelmingly negative response to the recent release of Redfall. And, which Phil are we blaming? Phil Spencer, of course. The Head of Xbox himself says that he takes "full responsibility" for that game and the everything that's wrong with it.
Spencer's noble self-sacrifice here was shared during a lengthy interview on the Kinda Funny Xcast. Spencer says that he is "upset with myself" and is "gonna take full responsibility for launching a game that needs to be great." He also touches upon the disappointment fans felt with the game, especially with its $70 (USD) price, and still offers support for the game's developers, Arkane Austin.
The full interview can be seen here, but the specific bit about Redfall can be seen in this Twitter clip.
"There’s nothing that’s more difficult for me than disappointing the Xbox community, and just kind of watch the community lose confidence [and] be disappointed.
“I’m disappointed, I’m upset with myself. I kind of revisit our process. I think back to the announcement of 60 frames-per-second, then we weren’t shipping 60 frames-per-second, that was our punch in the chin, rightfully, a couple of weeks ago.​
"The critical response is not what we wanted. Kind of pick myself up (and go): What can we learn? How 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 [the] creative aspirations of our teams.
"I’m a huge supporter of Arkane Austin. Their track record is awesome, I love a lot of the great games they’ve built. This is one where the team didn’t hit their own internal goals when it launched. I think it’s maybe a little simplistic to just say 'Hey if you would have just delayed it three months the core creative of the game would have delivered on something that was different to what it was'."
“I’m disappointed, I’m upset with myself. I kind of revisit our process. I think back to the announcement of 60 frames-per-second, then we weren’t shipping 60 frames-per-second, that was our punch in the chin, rightfully, a couple of weeks ago.​
"The critical response is not what we wanted. Kind of pick myself up (and go): What can we learn? How 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 [the] creative aspirations of our teams.
"I’m a huge supporter of Arkane Austin. Their track record is awesome, I love a lot of the great games they’ve built. This is one where the team didn’t hit their own internal goals when it launched. I think it’s maybe a little simplistic to just say 'Hey if you would have just delayed it three months the core creative of the game would have delivered on something that was different to what it was'."
There are some big differences between how Redfall shipped and how Sea of Thieves and Grounded shipped. Sea of Thieves was largely functional but rather barebones at release. It wasn't a bad game, per se, just light on content. Grounded had a lengthy Early Access release before it was "released" as a finished product. Redfall is supposed to be a "complete" release. It's not a live-service title. It was supposed to be done, shipped, and that was essentially it. Maybe there'd be more content later. It wasn't supposed to be put into a position where it needed all of this extensive post-release TLC like it's apparently going to get now because it shipped in such a horrible state.
Although it does sound like Microsoft will support them like EA did with DICE on Battlefield 2042 (actually Bethesda/Zenimax for Arkane would've been a more apples to apples comparison). Not abandoned, which is better than nothing I guess...
.........I'm still hurting from Konami and CrimeSight. SPEEDY abandonment there.