Starfield Didn’t Receive Extra Pressure from Redfall, Says Xbox

wccftech.com:

Starfield is out and by all accounts, it is receiving a warm reception. It is currently sitting at 88 average score on Metacritic and OpenCritic, both of which include our review (scored 9/10). Here's what Francesco had to say in his final words:

At the start of my journey in Starfield, my experience was admittedly rather dull and boring, but as I collected more Artifacts and got involved in the sprawling sci-fi universe created by Bethesda, I started warming up the game, getting to the point that I have some difficulty putting it down. While Starfield refines more than innovates the typical Bethesda formula, it is undoubtedly one of the best games ever made by the studio and one of the year's finest titles.

It is great news for Microsoft, which had long sought an acclaimed single player exclusive release and also needed to justify the 7 and a half billion spent for Bethesda. Redfall, the first exclusive game published by Bethesda under the Microsoft ownership, didn't exactly fare well when it launched in May.

Speaking to GamesIndustry, Xbox chief marketing officer Jerret West argued that the game didn't really receive any extra pressure from the unsuccessful launch of Arkane's game, although that doesn't mean the pressure wasn't high anyway.

When you think about where we want to get to on the first-party side, we want to get it to flow, where there's no single game that feels like it has that much weight and expectation, I guess you could say. When I look at Starfield, I don't necessarily think that Redfall placed inordinate pressure on it. I think Starfield put pressure on itself, because of the fact it is an ecosystem draw. Bethesda makes a new IP RPG once every two decades. So, there was just the natural attention