Report: Redfall Developers Hoped Microsoft Would Cancel or Reboot the Game - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 June 2023 / 5,687 Views
Arkane Austin's Redfall released last month in a poor state and is currently sitting at 56 on Metacritic and 58 on OpenCritic.
A new report from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who spoke with over a dozen people who worked on the game, has shed some details on the troubled development on the game.
Development on Redfall began in 2018, At the time, ZeniMax was encouraging its developers to add microtransactions to upcoming games as a way to generate revenue beyond the initial sales. While it wasn't a mandate, microtransactions were added to Fallout, Doom and Wolfenstein.
Redfall from the start was pitched to employees as a multiplayer Arkane game," despite the studio being best known for single-player games. Harvey Smith and Ricardo Bare, the co-directors on the game, failed to provide clear direction for the game, which frustrated developers.
Arkane Austin was also understaffed having less than 100 employees, which for a game like Redfall is not enough. The sources say that even support from ZeniMax’s Roundhouse Studios and other outsourcing houses weren't enough.
By the end of Redfall's development, around 70 percent of Arkane Austin staff that worked on Prey left the studio, according to people familiar and a Bloomberg analysis of LinkedIn and Prey’s credits.
When Microsoft acquired ZeniMax and all of its subsidiaries for $7.5 billion, there was hope that Microsoft might cancel Redfall or reboot it as a single-player game. However, Microsoft would instead take a hands-off approach. Microsoft has allowed ZeniMax to continue to operate as it had before.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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The hands off approach works when the whole studio is on board, not in the middle of development for a game most of the devs don't want to work on. Hopefully from this point forward, MS will be more involved in making sure the whole studio is okay with the project before starting or continuing development.
It's also wild how Zenimax/Bethesda goes basically unscathed from criticism during this entire thing when it seems very obvious they were the ones Pushing Arkane in the live service direction.
If MS would've do that, they would be blamed as well
Yeah. It's a no win for MS. In this case they're too hands off. In most cases we hear about publishers pushing devs too hard.
At the end of the day, this feels kind of like the developer shifting the blame for making a crappy game. If Microsoft came in in the middle of development and started changing things around, they'd be saying that Microsoft meddled and force them to make a bunch of changes that they weren't equipped to make. But since Microsoft didn't do that, the problem is that Microsoft didn't come in and force them to make changes
Well, if you think about it: no one would've been the wiser had MS decided to cancel or reboot the game after acquiring Zenmiax in March 2021. Redfall wasn't announced until a few months later. I would assume it was this period of time that the developers in question are referring to mostly.
but would've been a tough call to make either way, especially with MS deciding to allow Bethesda the freedom to work on projects they greenlit in the first place.
Honestly, it was best the game released as is and failed as hard as it did. From the report, Harvey Smith and Ricardo wanted to make Redfall despite not having any vision or direction for the game. So if MS came in and canned it after 2-3 years of development, you'd be at risk of pissing off the heads of the studio which would not have been a great start. This was the last of the Bethesda started projects that were designed from the start to being a mtx live-service. Hopefully this will be the end of it and all of Bethesda's studios are only focused on making the games they want to make, but damn, 70% of Arkane Austin leaving....that's going to be hard to recover from. I LOVED Prey and it's sad that nearly that entire team is gone.
This should also mean to MS that they need to get in there early on if a project is clearly not working out lol. In this case, if MS had intervened, there would've been non-stop reports of "MS taking over Bethesda cancelling projects" or some stupid bs lol.
Possibly. It's really a tossup. People to this day are still pissed and blame Xbox for the cancellation of Scalebound despite Platinum having admitted the issue was on their end. So would it have been better for Bethesda to have a hard lesson learned, although FO76's launch should've been that hard lesson learned lol, or MS cancelling the project and risking more long term bad blood?
I think if studios raise proper information to MS and ask for their help, MS would bend over backward to give what they need.
I think, what MS needs, is to communicate to every development team is that being parented by another publisher or not there should be no barrier to asking them for support.
About 70% of the developers leaving means most of the orginal talent is likely gutted. Wonder how many of the upper staff and management are included in that figure? With rising costs and prolonged development time, even a successful studio is really only one flop away from crumbling.
I'm pretty sure MS's hands-off approach isn't to blame, more like Arkane Austin's leadership prevented useful information to reach MS untainted. The leadership probably was probably experiencing something akin to a sunk cost fallacy that made them overlook things too much.
If MS need to change something it's to make sure that its "Let studios do what they want to do" policy is applied from the staff up and not the leadership down. However, for all we know, it might actually already be the case and Redfall suffered from being too far ahead in development when Bethesda was acquired.
Edit: To better convey what a was saying, a hands-off approach should not be a barrier for information to still be transmitted properly, it only means that there's trust that the appropriate entity will raise the appropriate flag at the appropriate time.
This sounds like MS hands-off approach is to blame. They are relying on other people to tell them if a game is good or not. If they would have been more involved they could have seen for themselves.
Sony literally has project meetings with all the studios and their current projects. If things aren't turning out how they want they cancel the whole project. These studios and games represent their brand. Relying on one person in a studio to feed you information has clearly been shown not to be a reliable way to handle things.
Sony's approach is very different on many levels so I don't think any comparison here is relevant.
Maybe MS is to blame for having too much confidence in a publisher like Bethesda or a renowned studio like Arkane Austin. But, even if it's the case the conditions that resulted in the state of Redfall likely would not have been possible if the acquisition happened earlier in this title development or even before its inception. So I don't think the off-hands approach is to blame in that regard.
If anything we can say this approach has a loophole when acquiring a studio that's parented by a publisher in which MS has confidence. A very specific condition that should be addressed by a very specific fix and nothing more.
MS faced issues in development even on studios they owned for a long time like Rare and 343i so nope this isn't due to loophole for new purchases.
Rare issues were prior to MS's change in approach and the first new title they made since given freedom was arguably the biggest success they ever had. And there's no indication 343 industry issues are due to this approach, in fact, the same issues were present at 343 prior to this change.
So you would say Sea of Thieves didn't launch full of issues and same with Halo franchise for quite some time? If you say so.
Like I said 343 industry issues were present prior to the change so I don't know why you focus on attributing Infinite issues to this change.
Sea of Thieves releases suffered most from lack of content and mostly an issue with the installer/launcher/updater not really a buggy mess in the game. SoT was always slated to be a GaaS so the initial lack of content is not as much of an issue compared to a non-GaaS like Redfall
Anyway, I fell to see how in this the MS hands-off approach is to blame. Do you think MS should magically see issues that the studio's own QA department failed to see.
Yes 343i issues are there almost since inception, so sure you may say the changes didn't caused those issues, but doesn't seem to be any type of solution as well.
Yes SoT issues were mostly of lack of content, should that be considered some positive on the management?
A small issue not being seem by MS? Sure I can see they not seeing. But Redfall faults are so clear (as is Gollum) that any 30min play should show. And as I pointed in other post. Even their internal review was "double digits" higher, so likely something like 10-15 points, which would still put the game on very low end.
Even Spencer (was him right?) saying that another 6 months delay wouldn't solve the underlying issues wouldn't be solved is evidence of their knowledge of how bad it was and deciding to go along.
"Sure I can see they not seeing. But Redfall faults are so clear (as is Gollum) that any 30min play should show" Then why Arkane QA didn't say anything or if they did why Arkane did not raise the issue higher and ask for delay themselves? Also why Bethesda, the actual publisher tasked to oversee Arkane, saw nothing?
You'll need a source for Spencer here cause everything I've seen for him on this was after the release with the hindsight of the issues. there was no "we saw it but decided to go along" from MS, that's a false narrative unless you back it up.
You are assuming they didn't because you want to believe that if anyone at any point in time had mentioned to MS that the game was in poor state they would have solved the problem. You seem to not accept the possibility of MS receiving the report and simply not caring.
https://www.escapistmagazine.com/phil-spencer-honest-explanation-redfall-failure-double-digits-lower-review-scores/
You seem to not accept the possibility of MS receiving the report and simply not caring. Yeah right, because this makes so much sense. I'm sure Phil Spencer and Xbox are like yeah let's ship something awful we so much love doing interviews picking up the pieces.
And at the time of the article, Redfall score was low 60s, something like 63-64, not the mid-50 it is now. A double-digit higher anticipated scoring bring internal scoring between the mid-70S to mid-80s, so good to somewhat great but nothing that foresees such a result and nothing that would warrant a delay. And this actually supports my assessment that the decision for MS not to intervene was due because they received the wrong signal from both Arkane and Bethesda.
mid 80 would need about 20 points, you are going far to get there. And well if anyone in their team though that would reach mid 80 they would be considered crazy, and if their average mock review was that then they have a team of morons.
You'll also say that MS was totally unaware that 70% of the team working on Prey had left (either replaced or open position) and the team being always understaffed?
When did MS decided to be full hands on for Starfield, before or after Redfall and if before why?
9 reviews still gave Redfall 80+ and that is with the full release on Xbox/PC. With that in mind, give an internal review team a sample that showcased the best and avoids the worst like the one they shared with the media a few weeks prior to release, and yep it is a recipe for disaster just like the one that did happen. Don't know why this should be considered unrealistic or moronic that someone reaches this conclusion in this context.
Redfall was in its 4th year of development when the acquisition closed and the damage was already done by then regarding employee departure.
The understaff situation again falls under Bethesda's supervision and they should have been the ones providing assistance or requesting assistance from MS if they lacked proper resources. Do you have a source that says Bethesda did so but went ignored by MS?
Bethesda tried to solve the issue by delaying the game from its initial 2022 release. It was not enough for sure but that is entirely on either them not wanting to give more time or the studio assuring the publisher it would meet the target.
As to why did MS got fully involved with Starfield? Maybe because Bethesda raised the proper signal on this one and requested support like they are supposed to do.
A minority of reviews being totally out of reality (some for know reasons) shouldn't be a defense. And for you is realistic that Arkhane leadership would fake their communication by providing selected content for mock review (and why would they do a small review instead of full?) to have high scores knowing the game will release and the true state of the game will be know? That is almost conspiracy theory level and basically would se the other 30% of the staff being fired.
And for the Starfield they giving the right signs, we should then believe that they can have half of the company working perfectly fine and the other half totally bonkers on their issues while at the same time Tango is doing fine on their releases?....
A minority of reviews being totally out of reality (some for know reasons) shouldn't be a defense
They show exactly the risk involved with a limited review sample and the internal review cannot be considered else wise than a very small sample. It shows that it's not unreasonable to think someone can reach those conclusions even if those conclusion does not turn out representative of the end results.
And for you is realistic that Arkhane leadership would fake their communication by providing selected content for mock review (and why would they do a small review instead of full?) to have high scores knowing the game will release and the true state of the game will be know? That is almost conspiracy theory level and basically would se the other 30% of the staff being fired.
I said the leadership at Arkane focused on the positive while showcasing their title. This is no conspiracy we know they have done so with the media at the very least. And this does not require them to have done so with the intent of being deceptive. That's just something studios do while showcasing games, use a sample that displays the best the title has to offer. It is really not remote at all to think they showcased the same build internally for review purposes furthermore when you consider that the effect of this would have been exactly what we did observe. However, the theory that MS simply doesn't care about quality is pretty much a conspiracy theory that has no logic supporting it and does not hold up when you give more than 30s of critical thinking.
And for the Starfield they giving the right signs, we should then believe that they can have half of the company working perfectly fine and the other half totally bonkers on their issues while at the same time Tango is doing fine on their releases?
Yeah because of course Bethesda has proven time and time again they are consistent across all their studios, Fallout 76 certainly displayed the same masterpieces of management as Doom.
Statistic is almost "sample size independent" if you get 10 reviews or 100 reviews the average shouldn't change that much. Just look for a lot of games we have seem that let's say on the first 10 reviews have an average of 90 and 100 reviews later it dropped to perhaps 87. Even Redfall you had it dropping from like 62 to 57.
Your example would be picking biased reviews to portray as average.
Sure it isn't unreasonable to think one or two people internally doing a mock review would have a high score, but it is unreasonable to think that without something fundamentally wrong going on 10 different people doing the mock review have a 20 points divergence from the real world (not only from reviewers, but basically almost consensus between players).
When you are doing PR yes showcasing the positive is obviously expected, even more when you are showing a game that is not finished, you are going to show the most polished stuff. But to them pretend that on their final review for release they would knowingly show only what was ok while hiding the other 90% that was bad isn't reasonable.
Where did I say MS doesn't care about quality? But they certainly don't hold it at the same standard as Nintendo or Sony and that is undeniable. The point is that they accepted it in this state, as I gave you the interview, double digits should be something like 10-15 points difference which should put the game (even when it was 62 a maximum of 77 which isn't a good score) so they accepted it. And Phil saying another 6 months delay wouldn't solve the issues also show that they knew and accepted that as it is what it is.
Consistent on quality is one thing, consistent on policies and message is another. Again you expect they to be fully transparent that Starfield is having major issues and asking delay, being fully liars but still asking delay for redfall and having no issue and not reporting anything and delivering a decent product on tokyo and deathloop?
Statistic is almost "sample size independent" if you get 10 reviews or 100 reviews the average shouldn't change that much.
To small sample can give a skewed representation of a population. but that's not even important here. Those reviews still assess that it is possible for a reviewer to give a great score on this game.
Your example would be picking biased reviews to portray as average
Not at all, my example illustrates that such scoring during review is in the range of possibilities. I'm not picking biased reviews I'm only attesting those exist.
Sure it isn't unreasonable to think one or two people internally doing a mock review would have a high score, but it is unreasonable to think that without something fundamentally wrong going on 10 different people doing the mock review have a 20 points divergence from the real world (not only from reviewers, but basically almost consensus between players).
We already know that Arkane's leadership went awry with actual devs' wills and concerns. Also, I don't think internal review means you ask your devs to review their own work. More like you hire an independent third party to review your game or a sample of it under NDA.
When you are doing PR yes showcasing the positive is obviously expected, even more when you are showing a game that is not finished, you are going to show the most polished stuff. But to them pretend that on their final review for release they would knowingly show only what was ok while hiding the other 90% that was bad isn't reasonable.
Tell that to Arkane leadership cause in every possible scenario that's exactly what they did. Even in case I'm not accurate, there's no way around the fact that Arkane did deliver a mess on something they reviewed as good and no way around the fact they should have been the entity with the most knowledge on the situation and no way around the fact they were the entity most apt to ring the alarm when it became a necessity.
Where did I say MS doesn't care about quality?
You said "You seem to not accept the possibility of MS receiving the report and simply not caring" implying that MS not caring for the quality of their product is a possibility.
The point is that they accepted it in this state, as I gave you the interview, double digits should be something like 10-15 points difference which should put the game (even when it was 62 a maximum of 77 which isn't a good score) so they accepted it.
Arkane accepted it in this state, Bethesda accepted it in this state, and MS's agreement with Bethesda was that they kept the role of the publisher so why would MS override Bethesda in this role? You place MS as if they had the same level of knowledge as the other two while by all logic Arkane should have had the most accurate level of knowledge then Bethesda based on what Arkane have shown/said to them then MS based on what Bethesda has shown/said them. Also, double digits only mean 10+ so I don't know why I could not be 17 or even 22. And as pointed out by others reviewers, 80 even 85 is possible to have been reached as a conclusion. So it's simply wrong to artificially limit the probable internal review score to 77 to attest to the possibility of such a scenario, because a scenario where they were one of the less accurate reviewers is always a possibility and not an unreasonable one.
Consistent on quality is one thing, consistent on policies and message is another. Again you expect they to be fully transparent that Starfield is having major issues and asking delay, being fully liars but still asking delay for redfall and having no issue and not reporting anything and delivering a decent product on tokyo and deathloop?
I have never called anyone a liar here, I've said they've raised the wrong signals but that does not mean there was an intent to deceive. The actual reasons those wrong signals were raised / the proper ones were not raised will never be known to us, but will certainly be the subject of their post-mortem and Arkane's leadership would, no doubt in my mind, be the one required to answer the most questions there.
Also, Ghostwire Tokyo, Deathloop, and Starfield are all different studios with different leadership, so differences in communication with Bethesda are to be expected. They also experience different contexts and different difficulties at different levels so you can't really compare them directly except asserting the possibilities with specific conditions.
Rare? Example?
Sony doesn't have anything equivalent to Bethesda. Microsoft bought a large publisher, and has allowed them to remain relatively independent. Generally speaking, this is a preferred model within an organization that was acquired. Comparing Sony's meetings with naughty dog to Xbox's meetings with a development team that is within a separate publishing business doesn't really make sense.
This actually might turn out to be good for Microsoft, in that they now have some cover to go in to those Zenimax developers, and Activision teams once that deal closes, and have more input.
It does make sense because at the end of the day Arkane is just a developer. I guess if MS wants to run with this excuse that's fine but the proof is in the pudding. Continuing to allow this to happen will damage their brand. They also made it clear that they were much more hands on with Starfield so it's not like they aren't doing it. They admitted to kind of letting Arkane do their own thing.
So they can either start setting up meetings with every single developer and get status updates on projects and getting hands on. Or they can keep acting like this is an impossible task for a trillion dollar company to take on and let these developers damage their brand more by not staying on top of them.
This doesn't mean they need to force them to make game after game that they have no interest in doing. It just means when they get a status update on a project if things aren't looking good it might be time to cut the cord and move on.
As there is a big difference between having a hands on and micromanaging or even taking the reins and also hands off or not even getting involved. It is perfectly acceptable to allow the team to do their vision but do the review and see if the end result is good or need rework (without dictating what it must become, just determining the level or quality it needs to achieve).
Doesn't matter how hands-off you are, you need to check how things are doing and are the ultimate responsible for the results.
Checking on the state of the project should fall on the publisher which is Bethesda in this case.
It makes no sense to retain Bethesda publishing entity just to overrule them in this role. If MS had such a confidence issue that they would overrule Bethesda even prior to the first issue, then they should just merge the publishing entity and worker under Xbox.
I'm not saying MS has no blame at all but saying something akin to MS should have had no confidence in Bethesda even without hindsight of an actual issue is a stretch.
I'm part of a very big company and all data of what my location do flows up and up with all the issues and what we managed to get done. Sure senior leadership doesn't look at the details but if there was let's say a big scandal regarding corruption the whole chain of command linking seniors until local would be questioned as you can't really claim to the board of directors "Hey we didn't know because we are hands-off and let them do whatever they wanted".
If you look for the answers gave during the redfall launch if I'm not wrong we even had Phil Spencer saying their internal review was double digits above the metacritic (and even 10 points more would still be a bad score). We have Phil traveling between the studios and you want me to believe that on their big purchase and lot of promises he never as much as played the game on any capacity to see it was totally bad from all aspects?
You want me to believe that MS Studios (yes Bethesda retain some freedom, but still falls under MS Studios) operates on a "trust me brother everything is perfect over here"? Nothing regarding as true evidence is ever show? This doesn't make any sense. I would bet that self published Indies to be allowed on the MS Store would go through bigger scrutiny than what you are suggesting MS does with their own internal teams.
You want me to believe that Bethesda only retained their publishing entity only in appearance while expecting MS to override them in this role.
Like I said I'm not saying MS has no blame at all but there's is no world where Bethesda should not have been more involved in the development and publishing of the title. And if Bethesda saw nothing why do you expect an entity with 1 more degree of separation that has committed to retaining Bethesda's freedom of management over their subsidiaries to be the one guilty of all the issues? It makes no sense.
If you're saying MS should have dissolved Bethesda publishing and merged them with Xbox I agree, but since they have not done so, from a Joint agreement with Bethesda, I expect Bethesda to execute the role of the publisher and not MS.
Nope, I do expect that the company that owns them to be responsible for overseeing their activity.
PD and Bungie are both independent entities for SCEI, still if they put bad games I would certainly hold Sony also responsible. And see that even Bungie being independent Sony gone and used their expertise to evaluate the portfolio of GAAS they were working on. That isn't micromanaging, that is being ultimately responsible for your team.
Don't worry I also hold Bethesda and Arkhane responsible for this deep shitty outcome. But for me the higher you are in the hierarchy the more responsible you are for the issues happening even if you are more distant from the problem itself. You should only delegate and put below you someone you believe will do the work right and keep oversight to ensure that is happening.
Nope, I expect the entity tasked to oversee the development to just do so. Bethesda and MS agree that Bethesda was going to do this task so there's no reasons not to put the blunt of the blame on them and Arkane.
While MS should be tasked to oversee Bethesda themselves they are totally dependent on what signal Bethesda sent their way. They cannot realistically be at Bethesda on a day to day basis and even less so at Arkane. They were never going to overrule Arkane nor Bethesda in their respective role either. That would display a great lack of trust, only make for tense relation and bad work condition. MS are dependent on the information Bethesda and Arkane forward their way, or the presentation they give. MS share of the blame is limited to the action they've taken upon the information presented to them and if said presented information always gave a green signals then they could only be blamed for their trust of said information.
MS is the one tasked to front the public that's why they are the one publicly taking the blame but be sure that any fix resulting of this mess will target Bethesda and Arkane leadership to get their shit together.
Nope, I never asked for day to day interference. I don't know why you go to such extreme. Doesn't matter how much you trust your process or people, you need evidence to show things are going as expected, you have cadence reviews, and it doesn't matter that you were great last year you still have to show you are doing great now.
And again Arkane have been shown to be able to create limited build showcasing portion of the titles that most agree was quite good. Upon this why would MS distrust Bethesda and Arkane in their respective role.
If next Arkane title ship with such awful state then I'll 100% blame MS not to have acted on Redfall post-mortem action items.
I assume MS didn't cancel this because they were trying to fill the massive game void. Along with hoping that game pass would "save it" since no one had to actually buy it.
2021 ended in Halo infinite releasing after a years delay and still missing several parts. 2022 was bone dry. 2023 may have Starfield eventually.
They went with something is better than nothing.
Platform Accreditation across the industry needs to have a spotlight shone on it, you would think that with all the hoops developers talk about having to jump through in the name of accreditation it would be effective but instead it seems to be no more than a pathway filled with a series of toll booths .
The answer is easy and it serves a dual purpose since it also vindicates those that believe all gaming ideas are stolen from Nintendo and best of all fixes the problem without the need for any necessary structural reforms, we just put an Xbox/PS seal of Quality or it's digital equivalent on every game problem solved. 😊
There's supposed to be trust between the platform holder and Publisher. More so when the publisher in question is as big and experienced as Bethesda.
The only way to explain Redfall's situation is that the proper information did not reach the appropriate person. The actual entity that should have overseen the development was Bethesda and even they did not intervene in any meaningful manner, meaning Arkane's leadership was probably gatekeeping (maybe/probably inadvertently so) some information. Even the early demo that was sent to some media got generally positive commentary but then again it was Arkane who chose what they actually sent, which no doubt tried to show the best the title had to offer. If this is what they showcased to Bethesda and MS no wonder they did not intervene.
I agree with david jaffe, that xbox internal have no idea what they're doing with bad management.
Microsoft are the biggest idiots,
Just like Warner bros forcing rocksteady to make kill the justice league when both arkane and rocksteady's bread and butter were single player masterpieces...
Microsoft and Warner bros should just end themselves for the embarrassment now and for the embarrassment to come haha
It's not like MS is swimming in releases from their studios. I feel like if Spenser played the game once he'd have known it was bad. I find it hard to believe that he wasn't curious at all about one of their only 2 big games for 2023. I also can't believe that he had no idea it was bad when he saw it.
Either Xbox has a leader that has absolutely no understanding of and or interest in video games or he knew it was bad and decided to just let it run its course and take what ever profits it could pull in. I think the second one is the simplest and most likely.
If MS canned the game, more people would be asking for heads to roll.
Why is Bethesda getting off the hook here? Its their internal studio which they are self managing. Fingers are being pointed at the wrong people as usual.
Questions need to be asked at Arkane and Bethesda first.
Because they were purchased by Microsoft and now Microsoft owns them and decides how the company is run. If your a shift manager and your team fucks up a job do you think your boss is going to be able to tell the owner "well actually Azzanation runs that team so this is his fault". It doesn't work like that.
Honestly it doesn't really matter because as we can see it's in the best interest of Xbox to properly manage their studios cause this will reflect poorly on them and their brand. This is why Sony consistently checks on projects and even out right cancels them mid production. The money lost in development isn't worth releasing a bad game and hurting the brand.
Exactly. As I tell my team you have to report everything that needs acknowledgment or action from your leader, and the leader also must monitor that he is receiving the reports and solving the problems instead of blindingly trusting and them blaming the person under saying "ow but I trusted he was doing a good job this is why I never checked".
Leader within that company. You aren't calling Bill Gates if you have a bad Windows update.
Thats not how buisness works. If you buy a bad product your problem is with the company who made it and their mamagment. When the Servers are down on Diablo 4, you calling Bobby Kotick? Dont be silly.
They released the game anyway to avoid any lost investment, hence why it wasnt cancelled.
I'm very sorry for the situation these devs faced if this report is true (as always I treat rumors with a mountain of salt) and the end result of the game is very well matching poor conditions. And seems like some devs publicly complained about their co-workers celebrating the failure.
If this was 10 years ago, and gamepass didn't exist it might have made sense to cancel the project as it would have been killed in retail. Since gamepass exists, it was probably better to release it, and learn from it to improve efficiency across Zenimax/Microsoft going forward.
GamePass doesn't look to have had any influence over the conditions that resulted in the game state however. So very hard to estimate anything in this regard.
I'll argue that GamePass or not if the proper information had reached MS the title would still have been, at the very least, delayed and probably rescoped.
Game Pass may have helped if the game were to have been released in an announced beta state like Grounded other than that I don't think it serves any purpose for games in Redfall's state.
I think that he is saying that since GP can cover the cost with the "granted revenue" it is better to release to generate content, and improve later, while if there was no GP and depended on only sales it would have tanked.
Yes but also that the game would have been canceled prior to release as a result while Gamepass is allowing for content to be released in such a state. I argue that Game Pass was not at play in any way on the game release quality. And also that this assertion is not accurate. GamePass is not a shield for bad games nor an excuse to release buggy mess, doing so would only hurt Game Pass's reputation, Xbox's reputation, publishers' reputation, studios' reputation and increase employee/consumer dissatisfaction.
Now if the game was marketed as a beta/early release and priced accordingly then it's another story.
That isn't what we hear on internet. All the time it is "well it is good for gamepass", "I didn't have to pay so it is good enough", etc. Sorry but being on Gamepass lower the criterea of acceptance by quite a wide margin.
You're conflating game scope and stability and/or things said mostly by GamePass detractors as things wildly said by actual users. GamePass allows games with lower scope to have better visibility by lowering the barrier of entry for trying the title. eg. Pentitment. That does not make Game Pass suited for buggy messes.
Nope, these I'm mentioning I saw from GP supporters not detractors. Going to the length on games that were also on PS that PS owner had an issue since they had to pay 70 to see if they liked the game, but they were playing for free and loving it. We still have plenty of Xbox fans saying Redfall is a great game.
There's also some that rate the game positively on steam their no need for bias to this, the game is not without some good aspect. There always going to be someone with opinion X, the question is, it it wildly shared amongst said group and so far what your providing is hearsay and anecdotes.
I mostly see comments like yours using it mockingly than people being seriously giving a game like Redfall a pass because it's on GP. I think I've only seen 1 person call Redfall any better than "okay."
The comments I typical see or hear are; " It's on GP so I'll give it a try." That's not the same as giving a bad game a pass.
Mileage may vary between who is throw in your twitter base for example. Have seem quite a good number defending Redfall as a great game (but of course most are complaining).
Oh I'm sure. Fortunately I don't have a Twitter and only check it based on what others post on here or other gaming sites. I refuse to read the comments lol
There are some good memes and jokes though, but yes console war on twitter is on another level.
Cancelling it for ps was all that they wanted, then lied and hyped it like it was the next big thing
I love how everyone here is pretending there was no choice and no way this could've turned out better, and it's "no one's fault". The game is unfinished and buggy as hell, it could've been delayed for a better outcome.
No one is shielding MS of criticism. It needs to be for what they actually failed to do. Not for the entire development and direction of the game, which largely lies on Zenimax and the higher ups at Arkane Austin.
Problem is MS has no clue what a good game is! Look at how Phil and Aaron were praising Halo Infinite before it’s initial reveal!
How many games this gen have actually been bad under Xbox? Redfall is the only one I can think of. For the most part, Xbox hands off approach has worked for them since they went that direction.
He said reveal not release. They said they were confident in what they were showing, but after the strong backlash decided to delay the game and work on the complains.
Ah you're correct I misread that.
No problem, we all do that. And I do agree with you that Halo had its issue on release, but certainly not even on the same scale as on the reveal.
