Will Xbox exclusive Starfield suffer the same fate as Redfall?

Xbox exclusive Redfall is one of the biggest surprises of 2023, although unlike Dead Island 2, it’s surprising for all the wrong reasons. Developed by the studio behind Prey, Redfall launched to disappointing reviews earlier this week. Originally thought to be one of the major selling points for Xbox Game Pass, Redfall was criticised for its bland world and uninspired gameplay. Needless to say, some Xbox fans are worried that upcoming exclusive Starfield will suffer the same fate when it launches for Xbox Series X/S later this year. However, according to head of Xbox Phil Spencer, Microsoft has assigned more resources to Starfield.

Indeed, in an interview with the Kinda Funny XCast, Spencer said that Microsoft didn’t really engage with Redfall studio Arkane Austin.

“When we acquire studios, there are games that are in development, and then there’s things that are either really early in development or not even conceived yet,” Spencer explains. “I think we need to improve in engaging with games that are mid-way through production when they become part of Xbox.

“We didn’t do a good job early on in engaging Arkane Austin to really help them understand what it meant to be part of Xbox and part of first-party, and use some of our internal resources to help them move along that journey even faster. We left them to work on the game.”

According to Spencer, Microsoft could have helped Arkane Austin take better advantage of the Unreal Engine during development. Arkane’s previous releases had been built using different game engines, which potentially caused issues with the final build.

“We should’ve been there for [Arkane studio director] Harvey [Smith] and the team earlier,” he continues. “I think that’s on us.

“And then through the process. It’s an Unreal game, we have a bunch of studios that have done some really great work on Unreal over the years, and I think we were too late to help in that when they had certain issues.”

On the plus side, Spencer believes that Microsoft engaged far better with Bethesda during the making of Starfield.

Spencer suggests that Microsoft “did a better job” with Starfield because it was earlier in development when the company purchased Bethesda.

Fingers crossed Microsoft’s involvement results in a much better launch for Starfield, which is shaping up to be one of the biggest games of the year.

A brand new role-playing game set in space, Starfield lets players explore hundreds of planets in an epic adventure.

“In this next generation role-playing game set amongst the stars, create any character you want and explore with unparalleled freedom as you embark on an epic journey to answer humanity’s greatest mystery.”