Redfall: “I’m mad at myself”, Phil Spencer’s admission of failure

It has escaped no one, Redfall is a real critical failure. With a Metascore of 59% obtained from the press, the game from Bethesda Softworks unfortunately does not live up to expectations, especially for an Xbox exclusive which must hoist Microsoft’s console to the top. But the players are even more severe than the specialized media and at this stage, the user opinion is at 2.7/10 and the feedback from the players is scathing. Guests on the Kinda Funny Xcast show, Phil Spencer (boss of the Xbox division) returned to this case and tried to provide explanations. First thing to try to defuse the situation, he admits the poor quality of the title and says he is angry with himself. Unexpected remarks from a leader of a group like Xbox who rather uses wooden language than to admit failure, but it is this strategy that Phil Spencer has decided to tackle. Play transparency and sincerity.

There’s nothing harder for me than disappointing the Xbox community. I’ve been part of it for a long time. I am the head of the Xbox branch. I have a lot of friends who gave me their feedback on the game, and see the community (Xbox, editor’s note) lose confidence, be disappointed… I’m also disappointed. I am angry with myself. We are going to review our entire process. Thinking back to the announcement of 60fps and the fact that we’re not releasing the game at 60fps, it’s a big blow to us, and to see the game release in that state… The response of the review was not what we wanted, and that is disappointing. I’m trying to recover…

What can we learn, how can we improve? The things I’m going to fight for is… There are definitely things we can do in execution, but if there’s one thing I won’t do, it’s put the pressure against the creative ideas of our teams. I know a lot of people will say, “You have people who know how to make these kinds of games, so push them to make them”, but I don’t believe in that.

When Rare wanted to do Sea of ​​Thieves, when Obsidian wanted to do Grounded, when Tango wanted to do Hi-Fi Rush when everyone probably thought they were making a mistake…I want to give teams a platform creative to achieve their creative desires. But I also need to have a great proposal of games capable of delighting our fans and we did not meet this expectation, I apologize.

When asked to push back Redfall for a more convincing result, Phil Spencer believes that it would not have changed much. Admittedly, the bugs and technical errors would have been corrected, but the vision of the game as Arkane Austin imagined it would have remained the same, and it is on this point that Redfall does not keep its promises. The disappointment is therefore palpable on Microsoft’s side, and the very disappointing result of Redfall is perhaps the tree that hides the forest. It is true that the Redmond firm has failed to keep its promises for all these years. Xbox One was a failure, exclusives on the Xbox Series generation are slow to come out, console sales are falling, many studio takeovers do not materialize, the complications of the Activision Blizzard King takeover, only the Xbox Game Pass is the ultimate weapon against Sony PayStation and Nintendo, which manage to sell consoles and games in pallets. Xbox is therefore questioning itself and it was clearly unexpected.