Redfall's Mock Reviews Were At Least Ten Points Higher, Says Phil Spencer

thegamer.com:

Redfall launched three days ago but the amount of bad press it has received may have fooled you into thinking it has been more like three weeks. Redfall is Arkane's lowest-scoring title reviews-wise by quite some way, something that has apparently surprised Xbox. Phil Spencer revealed while discussing everything Redfall this week that the team's mock reviews had the new vampire game scoring at least ten points higher.

“We do mock reviews for every game that we launch and this is double digits lower than where we thought we would be with this game,” Spencer told Kinda Funny. “That’s one of the disappointing things, we would never strive to launch a game that we thought was going to review in the low 60s.” Redfall has since fallen even lower, currently sitting on a Metacritic score of 59.

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Arkane's next lowest-rated game is 2003's Arx Fatalis which scored 71. Spencer and Xbox evidently thought even though Redfall was never going to be an Arkane masterpiece on the same level as Prey or Dishonored, it would at least score better than the previous record holder for Arkane's worst-scoring game.

Mock reviewing a game internally prior to its launch can obviously be helpful and must be something that prepares developers for the real thing otherwise Xbox wouldn't do it. However, it's unclear whether Xbox employs a third party to do that, although that seems likely, and will also never be able to factor in the various differing opinions reviewers will have once a game has launched.

The pressure was already on Starfield to be a game-changer for Xbox, and Redfall's launch has greatly increased that pressure. Not only for Xbox, but for Bethesda too since