It’s not as if other games haven’t launched to poor reception, only to become pretty good later on.The United State’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft amidst competition concerns in an attempt to block the company’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. They don’t need to be perfect, but they need to be interesting, fun, and playable – and something that you’ll be willing to come back to in order to get the full value out of it. And, he acknowledged the beefy cost of games like these for players, saying that he’s “going to take full responsibility for launching a game that needs to be great.”Īnd $70 games kinda do need to be great. For those wondering, he also noted that the developers are still working on the 60fps update. Effectively, players felt the game had one job and it failed at it.ĭuring his apology, Spencer reaffirmed Xbox’s commitment to the game, noting that Bethesda and Arkane will continue to support the game. Spencer also notes that the game isn’t hitting creatively. He admits that the animation, texture, AI bugs, and similar issues are a problem. Although, he also notes that while the game has bugs, what is going on technically, with things like crash rates, is “not out of proportion for a game that has just launched”. He goes on to say that the Redfall team is working on fixing the quality issues. He added that they wouldn’t have launched a game that they thought would hit that low. Redfall scored “double digits lower” in real reviews. He also explained that the Xbox team does “mock reviews” for their games prior to launch – which are intended to help predict the games’ reception. The apology came during an appearance by Spencer on Kinda Funny Games, where he noted that the most challenging thing for him is “disappointing the Xbox community”. However, that was when they were just Bethesda and not part of Microsoft and the Xbox family.

As we discussed on the last Always Online, Bethesda (Arkane in particular here) is known for delivering incomplete products that are later polished by mod developers. That said, it’s not the biggest surprise either. The whole thing probably sucks a bit more for them because it was the first official Bethesda exclusive to drop since Microsoft bought the Fallout developer. But, I’m glad I didn’t because the overall reception for the game has been poor enough that Xbox head Phil Spencer felt the need to apologize to players for it. The atmosphere was almost a sell on its own. Man, am I glad I was wary about dropping $70 on Bethesda’s vampire shooter, Redfall.

Bethesda sued over redfall