Xbox Game Studios Head Says Redfall Team Should Have Better Prepared to Be 'First-Party'

ign.com:

Xbox has had a challenging couple of years, to say the least.

Redfall recently launched to middling reviews and criticism of the game's bugs, co-op issues, and performance, at a time when Xbox was already suffering from concerns and criticisms regarding a multi-year silence from many of its 23 internal studios. Up until yesterday's showcase at least, the narrative has been that Xbox's AAA efforts have been floundering. But it all begs the question: what could Xbox reasonably have done differently?

Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty, like his fellow executives, recognizes that Xbox has a lot to prove to those who have been watching it closely since its late 2010s acquisition spree. So following the Xbox Game Showcase, I ask him if there's anything he'd do differently if he could go back to 2017 and play it all out again. Booty responds by telling me he'd change how he sets expectations: not with the Xbox audience, but with they developers Xbox acquired.

"When a studio becomes part of Xbox, like it or not, they become part of first-party," Booty responds. "And as part of first-party, they exist in a different spotlight; people look at them through a different lens. And it is my responsibility, our responsibility as the wider Xbox org, to make sure they understand that, and then to make sure that they’re set up and that we set expectations appropriately. If you’re a small studio that’s independent, you might ship a game, you might be working on something and say hey, this isn’t really working on, let’s just ship this thing, get it out of the way and move onto our next game. We don’t have that luxury as part of first-party.

"If I were to look back, where I feel a little remiss on the Redfall thing, that project was started