It's no secret that development on Redfall didn't exactly go to plan - as evidenced by the state of the game when it finally released in May 2023. Since launch, Phil Spencer has come out and said that he's "disappointed" with how he handled the release, and now a fellow Xbox exec has made some interesting comments on the title as well.
In an interview with IGN, Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty was asked about about the Arkane shooter and how it could have been handled differently during development.
"If I were to look back, where I feel a little remiss on the Redfall thing, that project was started before we acquired Zenimax, and I think we could have done a better job of onboarding them,"
"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 [...] 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."
Although things could have been smoother for Xbox, Bethesda and Arkane, Booty explained that it's ultimately down to him as Xbox Game Studios boss, and ZeniMax head James Leder, to take the flak and try to improve the title.
"To me, I just feel for the people that spent all their time working on that, and are coming under all this fire for their game. I just immediately go to, how do we support the team? How do we support them to get the game in good shape, and what can we learn from this?"
As it turns out, we've just started to see those improvements take shape. This week, Arkane delivered its first patch for Redfall a little over a month since the game's launch - containing a huge list of bug fixes and improvements. Redfall Update 1.1 doesn't contain the team's promised 60FPS mode, but the team also provided an update on that, which you can read down below.
What do you make of these comments from Matt? Let us know if you're playing Redfall after its 1.1 update.
[source ign.com]
Comments 13
Oh is that all it was, a little bit of tunnel vision, that’s nice to know. Their tunnel vision must have missed the tons of hilarious bugs I’ve seen online in Redfall.
Well, usually lots of people play the game on different stages of development and I hardly doubt that they didn't see all those problems. Perhaps they were forced to release Redfall asap, perhaps - not, but the result is disappointing.
'Tunnel Vision' in a title trying to do 19 different things....honestly just pick one thing. The patch did very little to the core issues and only addressed bugs. Very frustrating.
Glad to hear them speak openly about it rather than pretend it isn't a problem. Makes me more optimistic they are willing to fix the development issues so this doesn't happen again with another game.
Although, as with all statements, this is clearly a carefully worded statement to try to be careful with who they want to blame, but it's still a better statement than many people would give.
@Krysus 1 patch isn’t going to be the answer. This game needs 3-4 patches this size, then drop 60fps and the DLC. At the point the game will be in its best shape and then move on. One patch even tho a big one isn’t going to be the band aid it needs. If you are interested in playing it, i would wait until patch 2 or 3 of this size. I beat the game and underneath all the issues, i like it. I think if they really wanted to do a Sea of thieves with it they might be able to. Which is add content and fix up the code. It won’t ever sell but it might be worth having on GP as a co-op pickup game. 😊
Perhaps tunnel vision is stubbornly going ahead and disregarding any suggestion, comments or QA testing. Not good for anyone’s resume leading this project….
As I said yesterday, Redfall could cure cancer tomorrow and people would still find a way to hate the game.
they have 30fps vision lol
redfall is done stop wasting time and resources on it and make something else thats better
@GuyinPA75 it was supposed to be 2023 first big AAA or was marketed that way… and everyone was staked … there was pent up vitriol that perhaps went above and beyond… right now single player games are what gamers want. Sony is going more the other route and we will see how that works out for them….
The game has problems but I have enjoyed what I've played of it. The game has great atmosphere to set the stage with. They do have alot of bugs to fix. The game reminds me of Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, it was buggy as could be but I had a good time with it.
I spend 40 ours on pc version and yes it had a lot of perfomance issues and stutters but I liked shooting mechanics, combat and skills. If u ask me I woold say that for a AA title free on gamepass (if they fix the performance issues) the game is fine at this state. For a AAA title and an xbox exclusive it needed at least 2 more years of polishing.
@Kaloudz redfall caused health problems?
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