Redfall developer Arkane currently safe, Microsoft says
"It was a miss, but how much of a miss?"
Xbox has no immediate plans to shutter Redfall developer Arkane, after the studio's latest launch failed to find much of a positive critical or commercial reception.
Speaking to Axios, Xbox Game Studios chief Matt Booty said Arkane would remain open. "That is the plan right now," he said.
"They are hard at work on updates and continued content for Redfall," Booty continued, saying he wanted to "support them to be able to keep working to deliver the game they had in mind".
Earlier this week, at a post-Xbox Game Showcase media event in Los Angeles attended by Eurogamer, Booty notably skipped over Redfall when suggesting Microsoft had "turned the corner" on first-party game releases.
"We had some gaps last year, but I think we've turned the corner coming into 2023," Booty said on Sunday. "[I] feel very good about launching Hi-Fi Rush, we have Minecraft Legends out there which is doing well, we have Age of Empires continuing to come to console... and then as we saw today, this fall we have Forza Motorsport and Starfield."
As I noted in my own appraisal of Xbox's crowd-pleasing not-E3 turn, Microsoft appeared to be drawing a line under the matter by highlighting games such as InXile's Clockwork Revolution which were dreamt up after Xbox took ownership of the studio. Redfall, on the other hand, had been a project begun beforehand, without Microsoft's focus from the start.
Back in May, Xbox boss Phil Spencer also touched on this topic, while personally apologising for how Redfall landed.
"When we acquire studios, there's games that are in development when we acquire a studio, and then there are things that are either really early in development or not even conceived yet. We need to improve on engaging in games that are midway through production when they become part of Xbox," Spencer said.
"We didn't do a good job early on in engaging with 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 and move along that journey even faster. So, we left them to go work on the game."
So, how is Redfall doing now?
"It was a miss, but how much of a miss?" Booty concluded, adding it gets "good play" on Xbox Game Pass.