Redfall is “double digits lower than where we thought it would be” in its review scores, says Xbox boss Phil Spencer, but vows that Arkane “still has commitment to the game.”
Given Arkane’s pedigree, this week’s release of open-world vampire shooter Redfall can only be seen as a disappointment, with complaints of glitches and middling reviews at best.
Indeed, in a surprisingly candid interview with Kinda Funny Games (via VGC) Microsoft head of gaming Phil Spencer has talked of his own disappointment in Redfall’s reception, suggesting that mock reviews, conducted internally at Microsoft, had placed the game “double digits” higher than the scores it received on release.
“That’s one of the disappointing things,” said Spencer; “we would never strive to launch a game that we thought was going to review in the low sixties.”
The low-sixties Spencer refers to there is, of course, its aggregate score on Metacritic, which has the game pegged at 62 percent at the time of writing. More worryingly, perhaps, is the user score on the same site, which has the game at 2.6. Hundreds of reviews on Steam, meanwhile, have the game rated as ‘Mostly Negative’. Given that Redfall is intended as one of this year’s big releases, that’s far from good news for Arkane or Microsoft.
Spencer went on to say that he and his team at Microsoft left Arkane “to work on the game,” and adding that the studio needed more support during development. “I think that’s on us,” he said.
Nevertheless, Spencer added that Microsoft and Arkane are committed to supporting Redfall in the long term, with a 60fps update on the way. “We’ve shown a commitment to games like Sea of Thieves,” he added.
“The game was significantly below our internal metrics compared to how it reviewed,” Spencer conceded elsewhere in the interview. “That’s not on anybody but us – we have to own that.”
The interview’s well worth listening to in full – which you can do via the embed below. As for Microsoft, all eyes are on its next exclusive, Starfield, which will be shown off in more detail in a June direct live stream.
