Phil Spencer takes responsibility for Redfall: “I’m upset with myself”

What was supposed to be a new standard and guiding light for players of the Xbox series in this 2023 has become a new and great disappointment. Arkane was probably the last studio we would have expected such a setback from, but the reality is that Redfall has ended up being a soulless game that, according to our analysis, “wants to be many things at once, but ultimately fails to be any of them”. Not surprisingly, this has not gone unnoticed by Phil Spencer, head of the Xbox division, who spoke publicly for the first time since the game’s release.

“There’s nothing that is more difficult for me than to disappoint the Xbox community,” Spencer said on the Kinda Funny podcast. “And just kind of watch the community lose confidence... They’re disappointed, I’m disappointed, I’m upset with myself. 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? 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.”

“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 that they’ve built. The team at Arkane is taking the near-term feedback. We’re still working on the 60fps update,” Spencer continued. “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 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.”

The fact is that the critics have been practically unanimous, with rare exceptions, with Redfall. Yesterday we reviewed some of the most important and there is no doubt that the 62 that now appears in Metacritic is far from the expectations that had been created. Let’s hope that the Texan team of Arkane continues to work and finally makes Redfall what we once trusted it to be.