Few resources and poor guidance detract from Xbox Game Pass exclusive
While redfall‘S bumpy start and bad evaluation results surprised many Xbox fans Bloomberg Now reports that the developers behind the Arkane Austin studio have been aware of the problems for years. The online vampire shooter was envisioned as a live-service microtransaction game, but production was apparently understaffed and too directionless to deliver on that promise, while Microsoft remained almost entirely reticent.
The company advertised redfall as the next big blockbuster exclusive to Xbox when it released on May 2nd. However, fans soon discovered that the game was riddled with problems, from a world that seemed empty to vampire enemies that were occasionally baffling and boring to fight. Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming appeared on the Some fun games‘ Xbox Podcast shortly after release to apologize for the state of the game and promise that the company would learn from the debacle. “I’m mad at myself,” he said at the time.
One of the questions that bothered us all was why Microsoft didn’t just go for the release redfall, its first $70 game, in its current state, rather than delaying it yet again or canceling it, but why had the company marketed it so heavily when internally it was clear it wouldn’t meet growing fan expectations? Accordingly BloombergMicrosoft had little involvement in the game’s development, other than decision-making cancel a PlayStation 5 version of the game after Bethesda’s purchase in 2021.
Instead of more supervision or a large influx of new resources backed by the trillion dollar tech giant, redfallThe development was apparently just as difficult as before the takeover. Bloomberg reported that 70 percent of the team that made the stealth FPS had prey Arkane had left Austin by now redfall shipped, and that the direction of the game was difficult to pinpoint during production, vacillating between the touchstones of the industrial shooter type Far cry And border areas.
In order to attract more fans after the weak sales of previous Arkane games, the online shooter was planned to have an in-game microtransaction economy centered around cosmetics to increase profitability, as is the case with most modern shooters. Bloomberg Reportedly, those plans were eventually scrapped in 2021 as in-game monetization became increasingly controversial. The version of redfall This is now in the wild has these characteristics: a multiplayer game halfway between an immersive simulation, a loot shooter and a Fourteen days Live service meeting place that feels incomplete and understaffed.
In his interview with Some fun games, Spencer defended the creative direction of the game. “One thing I will fight is what kind of went wrong. There are clearly things we can do in terms of quality and execution, but one thing I won’t do is go against the creative ambitions of our teams,” he said. According to some developers Bloomberg spoke at least redfall was not an expression of their creative ambitions, but rather a business mandate from Bethesda. The big question will now be whether the impending $69 billion Microsoft acquisition and Game Pass business model will Arkane give Austin a chance to create something new, or when Chaos swarms around redfall will remain an albatross around the studio’s neck.
