Xbox Exec On Redfall: “It Was A Miss, But How Much Of A Miss?”

Arkane Austin’s Redfall received a very lukewarm reception upon release, and since then, reports of a troubled development process and a extremely hands-off approach from Microsoft have begun circulating. Speaking to Axios, Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty commented on Redfall’s poor reception and future as an Xbox first-party exclusive.

According to Booty, Redfall is getting “good play” through Xbox Game Pass. “It was a miss, but how much of a miss? I want to support them to be able to keep working to deliver the game they had in mind,” Booty said. Arkane Austin will still support the game in the near-future. “That is the plan right now. They are hard at work on updates and continued content for Redfall,” Booty added.

In a previous interview, Booty spoke about how he and management believed that the game would have had a more positive reception on launch. “Sometimes, a team can just get a little bit of tunnel vision around their game, and sometimes management can have the opposite problem where maybe they’re zoomed a little too far out,” he said. “And it was a case of us having indicators that the game was going to perform a certain way … we had people play the game, we had reviews, we do mock reviews, we just had indicators that it was going to perform better than it did. And I think the team was so committed to what they were building that they just had a little bit of tunnel vision.”

Earlier this month, the game received a 32GB update to help fix a range of issues, tighten up enemy responses, and increase enemy spawn rates. While there’s no release date yet for it, one of the other more anticipated features for the vampire-hunting game on Xbox Series X|S, is a 60fps performance mode that will be added in at a later date.